More hits and misses
TOTING up the gains and losses for We the People as this state’s legislature and governor meet in not always solemn assembly isn’t easy. As of the other day, the scorecard— complete with erasures and crossouts— looked a lot like a schoolboy’s homework after the dog had started chewing on it. But a running count of the Legislature’s adventures and misadventures needs to be maintained somehow.
Fun and folly mixed last week—it’s all there if only our reporters and editors could somehow begin to sort it. To cite some noteworthy examples:
The state’s House of Representatives passed a bill the other day that would make those outlets pushing “medical” marijuana sell vaping equipment and keep pharmacists behind the counter, too. Now it’s the state Senate’s turn to take a hand at trying to protect the public. Good luck. But happily, three of these pro-pot bills didn’t make it past the state Senate—but bad ideas never seem to die in the Ledge; they may get passed around, in a circle, hand to hand, around till they get worse. (One did pass 81-8. Again, where were the other 10 percent?)
As usual, the state’s once model Freedom of Information Act (thank you, Winthrop Rockefeller) might be reduced to still more tatters by the state’s Senate. SB373 would keep secret “a record related to pending or threatened legislation that, if kept by a private attorney for a non-governmental entity, would be privileged from disclosure as an attorney-client communication or attorney work product record . . . .” In this view, lawyers would be reduced to acting as a cover while the legislators lock the public out. “This is not about hiding,” claimed Bart Hester, a Republican senator from Cave Springs, “this is about allowing our agencies to have a fair day in court should they need that. This is not about a lack of transparency.” R-i-i-ght. And black is white and white is black. It’s hard to see anything else this ruse might be about except to assure a lack of transparency in government, whatever Senator Hester claims.
Meanwhile the great game of Fool The Public goes merrily along. One state senator kept his eyes open and powder dry on this occasion: Bryan King of Green Forest and fiscal sanity. “We are supposed to be about transparency and sometimes that transparency causes problems—there’s no question about it,” he noted. “But what has happened to the FOI and transparency this legislative session should be of concern to all citizens.” And all the people it is supposed to keep informed.
But there are some hits to go with the misses. Take the bill allowing patriotic organizations such as the Boy Scouts to visit schools to talk to kids about scouting. (Senate Bill 662.) Those of us who’ve been involved in the Scouts know the amount of good it does for young boys. They learn leadership, teamwork and, yes, how to be polite at an early age. This shouldn’t be a difficult vote at all. But you never know.
As the Scouts say, Be Prepared.