I’ve been a slow poster lately, mostly due to work raising its ugly head — it’s a damn shame I’m forced to make a living instead of being a Man of Leisure, but that’s the way it goes. Be that as it may, I caught the story of a classless move by Rep. Craig Fry with respect to the passage of the budget bill.
Apparently, he used the fact that House Republicans would not vote for the budget bill and the Democrats slim majority to essentially extort an additional $2 million for a school district in his area. If that’s not how the deal went down, I’d certainly welcome a correction.
A short-sighted view might call this shrewd politics or zealous advocacy on behalf of his district. But, ultimately, we all lose with this kind of free-riding negotiation. It’s kind of like the property owner who knows the highway is going through his yard, that all his neighbors have sold, and decides to extract excessive windfall profits from the public. That property owner’s negotiating position isn’t so good because of something valuable he has contributed, but only because he waited around long enough. So, he gets a windfall well beyond the value of what he’s giving, and the public loses. The next time a project is contemplated, it has more trouble going forward because even more people will want to be paid off as the hold out.
I don’t see any good that can come from Fry’s move. He looks bad. The Democrats who paid him off look bad. The Senate will almost certainly remove the $2 million from their version of the bill. If Fry’s gonna get his, the rest of the House Democrats might start asking why they shouldn’t hold out for theirs.
Like I said, my opinion here is based on the facts described above. If something different was going on, I’d sure like to know about it.
If Fry was still running for Mayor of Mishawaka, I might understand this as a “screw-you-guys-I’m-outta-here” move that would somehow help his potential campaign, but with his announcement last week that he wouldn’t be seeking that office, I am with you in my complete lack of understanding for what he was trying to accomplish by making both he and his Party look ridiculous. He had to have known that this wouldn’t have any long-term benefits…
Doug,
I heard some discussion of this subject this week on meet your legislators on PBS.They did not name this man but Rep Crooks said there were some heated words for this man behind the scenes and he was not allowed to say what went on in the caucus but he stated many democrats were angry at this man for holding the budget hostage to extort the additional money for his school district and they would not forget it!
What bothered me more about their budget was that to “balance” it, they’re holding $200 million back from local governments and not funding another $200 million in Medicare costs.
I know they have to reconcile the budget with the Senate version, but for a caucus in such a hurry to cut taxes, they seem to have little regard for basic financial ideas like “You can’t spend more than you have”.
It’s a screwed up world when the Democrats are the ones who want to cut taxes (damn the consequences) and the Republicans want to increase taxes (to make people behave the way they want). This must be that state of confuzion that DST opponents said people would be in if we changes our clocks. I prefer to blame class basketball.
There’s a bit of a back story to this. Rumor has it that Fry had asked Bauer directly for the appropriation early in the session, and Bauer denied his request (despite approving similar requests from other members). In fact, Fry attempted to use the same manuever on HB 1007 (property tax relief) but Bauer would not pay the ransom that time, so the bill died (you’ll see Fry voted nay). Fry proved he was serious enough about the $2M to let a key bill die, so Bauer gave in to him when THE key initiative was taken hostage in a similar way.
By refusing to compromise with the R’s and get bipartisan support, Bauer gives an enormous amount of power to the 51st voter and leaves himself in a position where one person can manipulate the process by holding key initiatives hostage (with casualties, ahem, HB 1007).
What Fry did was dirty, but I have to smile when I see Bauer get beat at his own game. Anyone capable of forcing Pat Bauer’s hand is definitely a force to be reckoned with.