Shhhhhhhhhhh! Legislators At Sleep

In case you couldn’t tell, not much is going on at the State Capitol these days.

Sure school groups are still marching through the building. And there are some occasional hearings, mostly for show. But by and large, business is done for 2006.

You see, John Gard (R-Sun Prairie/Peshtigo) and legislative majority leadership have kind of quit working for the year. After all, March 9th was a busy day for us all - that was the last day we met in session. We had ninety bills up, cleaning up the calendar so John could find his way around his place in Peshtigo (its been a while since he’s actually LIVED there). Oh, and he’s got that pesky Congressional race too….

So the lobbyists told us that was the end of session. After all, with a Republican majority the lobbyists always knows what’s going on before the minority party does…after all, the checks cleared. But other than a few “for show” issues, Wisconsin legislators quit work on a record early end date of March 9.

That doesn’t mean that the $45,569 annual salaries stop or the per diem faucet is turned down. It just means some legislators need to campaign and can’t be bothered by that pesky job of legislating.

To be fair, our offices still field a lot of constituent issues. Some of us still work, since the majority party agenda isn't much of an agenda for real people anyway.

But for GOP leadership to end our work in early March, despite not having done anything sustentative about property tax relief, affordable health care or ethics/election reform, means the public is not going to be happy with the Legislature. My guess is that more than a few GOP members are not happy with Gard’s call on ending session so early.

We’ll know soon. My hunch is that we will see a record number of legislative contests, with a whole lot of explaining to do by incumbent majority party legislators.