1 December 2018 — 0815 mst

Saturday roundup: bad bills, blasts, quick counts, & KRHC

Legislators continue requesting bills that are bad for Democracy. Sen. David Howard (R-Park City, SD-29), requested LC-1762, which carries the short title of “Require a super-majority vote to pass tax increases.” Rep. Forest Mandeville thinks that’s a good idea too, as do many who fear that majority rule can lead to higher taxes. On that, they’re right — far, far, right. Majority rule sometimes does result in higher taxes, more government spending, and better things. And Rep. Nancy Ballance (R-Hamilton, HD-87) is back with more bills on raw milk, a public health menace.

Should blasting a bill out of a committee require a supermajority?

A simple majority can blast a bill out of committee in Montana’s Senate, but it takes a 60-vote supermajority to blast out a bill in Montana’s House. Some legislators and lobbyists like that, as it lessens the probability that a bill they don’t like will escape its committee cage and appear on the House’s floor, where, in a moment of democracy run amok, a simple majority might pass it.

Congress has a similar process, the discharge petition, by which a majority can remove a bill from committee and subject it to debate, amendments, and an up or down vote. U.S. Speaker of the House Joe Cannon’s high-handed excesses led to the first discharge petition. It isn’t used often, and it succeeds only ten percent of the time. According to Realclearpolicy, between 1967 and 2003, 221 discharge petitions were filed, but only 22 made it to the floor.

Montana State Senator Llew Jones (soon to be Rep. Llew Jones), who has served in both chambers of our legislature, reports successful blasts are rare. He remembers only two successful blasts in the last session of the MT Senate.

The blast’s greatest value is as a deterrent to the nefarious practice of sending a popular bill to a committee that will bottle it up and kill it. If the committee’s members know there’s a remedy for their holding legislation captive, that they could be rebuked and embarrassed by a blast, they’ll be less likely to perform political hit jobs on bills that have majority support. A blast that requires only a simple majority is a much more powerful deterrent and remedy than a blast that empowers a minority by requiring a supermajority.

Whether Montana’s House should require a simple majority to blast a bill out of committee is being debated now, and in many venues. In the last few days, I’ve been part of a series of exchanges on Twitter included former legislator and Whitefish farmer Mike Jopek, former Kalispell mayor Tammi Fisher, Jones, former Rep. Mike Miller, Rep. Jeff Essman, wildlife lobbyist Ben Lamb, and others. I don’t know that minds were changed, but the discussion was interesting and useful, and might be of interest to others. Social media can be a productive platform for debate.

Counting ballots before the end of election day is a bad idea

Mail ballots slow down the counting. So do same day registration and provisional ballots. Some people don’t like that. Among them, reports Mike Dennison, are election administrators Dayna Causby, Missoula, and Bret Rutherford, Billings. They want a new law that lets them start counting votes before election day.

No. Ballots never should be counted before the polls close. The count could leak and affect the election.

Start the counting after the polls close. If a speedy count is deemed necessary, buy extra counting machines, hire extra workers, and start flat-mailing ballots. That might cost a bit more, but so what if it does? Nothing is as expensive to democracy as botching an election by trying to conduct it on the cheap because an election administrator wants to project the image of being a tightwad with the taxpayers’ dollars.

Reorganization at Kalispell Regional Healthcare

Yesterday, KRHC announced a major organizational shakeup, with 130 positions affected. Both the Daily InterLake and Flathead Beacon have stories on the situation.

I doubt this is the last of the affair. Despite its risible public relations offensive to allay the communities fears, an offensive that boils down to “We didn’t do it, and we won’t do it again,” and “You can still trust us; we’re professionals,” KRHC is in big trouble and will be closely supervised by the federal government until civil authorities are convinced that KRHC no longer is controlled by avaricious empire builders. I’ve received no evidence that the scandal has compromised the quality of medical care, but I strongly suspect it’s increased, or will increase, the cost of medical care. I also strongly suspect that KRHC has lost support and trust in the community it serves.

To the extent the situation can be addressed by state law, look for bills dealing with hospital governance to be introduced in the 2019 session of the Montana Legislature.

Incidentally, I still think of KRHC as Kalispell Regional Hospital. I associate “hospital” with medical care and “healthcare” with the greed that menaces universal, quality, medical care.