One of the life principles on which my kids have found me particularly insistent is that “a deal is a deal.” From time to time, you’ll see my son or daughter indignantly throwing that line in the face of the other one when they feel like someone has gone back on their end of the deal. My embrace of that principle is one of the reasons that I am very happy to practice law in a place like Lafayette. Because it’s relatively small, you learn very quickly the identities of those few attorneys whose agreements have to be in writing because you can’t trust their memory on what was agreed to.
I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what Speaker Bosma and Minority Leader Bauer agreed to. But, from all of the media reports, I got the sense that Bosma would hold up the freight train on Right to Work briefly, and that Bauer and the House Democrats would get to offer their amendments on Tuesday; but, in return for that brief respite, the House Democrats would not break the quorum by absenting themselves from the House.
In fact, the Democrats were not in the House yesterday, and Speaker Bosma has indicated his indignation on Bauer breaking his word and has indicated an intent to levy fines on the House Democrats. Mary Beth Schneider has a lot of the details in an article entitled ‘Right to work’ fight fuels rancor, rhetoric.
Bauer’s explanation for this change of course seems to be that he only recently learned of potential challenges to the constitutionality of deciding the RTW issue by a statewide referendum and claims the House Democrats need time to research the Constitutionality of the referendum. The Indiana Law Blog has a good post discussing the issue of whether such referendums are Constitutional. The main hitch is Article 1, section 25 of the Indiana Constitution which reads, “Section 25. No law shall be passed, the taking effect of which shall be made to depend upon any authority, except as provided in this Constitution.” (Completely digressive side note: I was pleased that the Indiana Law Blog noted excerpts from two Bill Drafting Manuals – one that I co-authored, and one that she co-authored.)
But, depending, of course, on what the precise promises were between Reps. Bauer and Bosma, the constitutionality angle seems like pretty weak sauce from Bauer. He would have known before hand that Republicans were going to offer any number of arguments as to why the Democratic amendments shouldn’t be adopted – questions about Constitutionality is just a subset of such objections. I do not favor Right to Work as a policy, but if Rep. Bauer promised that the House Democrats would come in to vote if Rep. Bosma delayed it for a little time, then this seems to fall into “a deal is a deal” territory. If he intended to continue with the quorum busting strategy, he never should have made the deal in the first place.
There will be a referendum on RTW this fall. All 100 seats in the Indiana House are up for election, and 25 of the 50 members of the Indiana Senate are up for election.
Plus, Indiana had RTW from 1957 to 1965. So if it’s a disaster, we’ll repeal it.
Sometimes I think the only reason we have state government is to keep some of these people from ruining the private sector.
That’s easy to say; but the problem comes when you think your representative or senator does a good job generally; but that RTW specifically is a horrible idea. And maybe the person running against the representative or senator has the better position on RTW but is, otherwise, a disaster.
I’m not sure there is any help for it; but elections are almost never good indicators of the public’s opinion on any particular issue.
I find it entirely plausible that Bauer was unaware of the Constitutionality angle. But yeah, a deal is a deal. And besides, if Bosma gives an opening and you screw it up, that’s on you.
Although they seem to take their election as a sign from God that whatever pops into their head (even if NOT discussed during the election) is allowable. And the old adage “you have to have someone to beat someone” in an election seems to ring true. It also helps to keep your majority if you get to draw the next decade’s district lines — to insure your members winning.
Since when has “Constitutionality” stopped any of these guys, particularly the Democrats, from voting for a bill?
There are a shocking 798 bills up for consideration this session. I’d be willing to wager that HALF of the them are unconstitutional in some way.
Now that would be an interesting study – an analysis of statutes that have been deemed unconstitutional with a tally of whether the legislation’s initial author was a Democrat or Republican. I’ll bet it ebbs and flows with the years; spiking when one party takes power after years of the other party appointing judges.
My biggest beef is those laws that say, “counties of more than 400,000 population but less than 700,000 population” (which is Lake County).
Technically, they’re not unconstitutional (because some dumbass judge has said so). But any fair reading of the Indiana Constitution would differ on that.
I was looking for something else, but was amused by this one:
I usually look at the General Assembly session as just the unfolding of a predetermined plan usually set by the end of the previous summer’s dress rehearsal. However, I really think some genuine animosity exists between Bauer & Daniels et al. At this point, Bauer’s delay tactic is fairly transparent and the union will have to pickup nearly $35,000.00 in fines @day; a small price to pay for the long term union survival within Indiana. Today’s channel 13’s Kevin Rader related a statement from a protestor who stated if they set up a picket line at the stadium, would the NFL league players (given their sympathy with the union)cross the picket line. I suspect Bauer is playing a high stakes game of who blinks first, and either way does not speak well for our Indiana politics and maybe worse for a P.R. move.