Some lessons to learn from this year’s long legislative session

By Iowa City Press-Citizen

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Here's a list of the top seven lessons to learn from this year's lengthy legislative session. Unfortunately, as with many things in Iowa politics, some the lessons are contradictory.

- No. 7: Elections matter. In the 2010 elections, Iowa voters gave a resounding vote of no-confidence to the Democratic trifecta that controlled the Legislature and the governor's mansion for the previous four years. They denied Democratic Chet Culver a second term and gave Republican Terry Branstad a fifth term instead. They gave Republicans supermajority control of the House, and they dialed back Democratic control of the Senate to the thinnest of margins.

So no one should have been surprised when the Republican House began passing bills based on their campaign promises. No one should have been surprised then that the Democrats went into defense mode and started measuring their political accomplishments by how many “out-of-the-mainstream” Republican proposals they blocked from becoming laws. And no one should have been surprised when Branstad had to remind everyone repeatedly that there was “a new sheriff in town.”

- No. 6: Mandates are elusive. Although Republicans understandably felt the voters had given them a mandate to cut back the size of government, many of the proposals passed by the House were clearly “out of the mainstream.” The early weeks of the session seemed to produce a flurry of offensive, discriminatory and sometimes ridiculous legislation that we were unsure whether to ignore (given that too much publicity sometimes keeps alive crazy proposals that otherwise would die a quiet death) or to call for the type of immediate negative backlash needed to stave off proposals that otherwise would take off quickly.

It probably will take until the 2012 election to find out the extent to which House Republicans overplayed their mandate.

- No. 5: Public input doesn't always change votes. State Sen. Shawn Hamerlinck was at least partially right when he told university students they'd be better off going home and focusing on their studies rather than coming to lobby at the statehouse. After all, many of the rallies at the statehouse - as well as any other large-scale attempt to lobby a large number of legislators - do amount to little more than a political circus.

The ralliers and protesters usually are there to preach to the converted rather than to try to change the hearts and minds of any legislators. And the legislators themselves have either made up their minds or simply are voting what their party leaders say to vote.

Once inside their chambers, in fact, the legislators can't even hear what the ruckus in the lobby is all about.

- No. 4: Public comment still matters. While individual acts of public outcry don't always succeed in swaying anyone's votes, they can have a cumulative effect. The immediate, negative backlash against some of the crazier proposals of this year's session - from the bill that would've required the University of Iowa to sell Jackson Pollock's “Mural” to the over-the-top calls for impeaching four Iowa Supreme Court justices - did send such ideas quickly to the political graveyard.

This year, many Iowans learned that they couldn't just sit back and trust that their favored party-controlled legislative house would block wrong-headed proposals from the other house. They had to mobilize and let their lawmakers know that higher education is a cause worth fighting for, that the proposed train from Chicago to Iowa City will have huge benefits for Eastern Iowa, that universal preschool is a worthwhile investment in the state's future, that the state needs enough inspectors to ensure the quality of nursing homes and that not every budget cut is a good budget cut.

- No. 3: Common ground is possible. It is amazing that, during one of the most divisive legislative sessions, Iowa lawmakers were able to put aside their political differences and support the state's fair, equitable and gerrymandering-proof redistricting process. By huge majorities, both the Democratic Senate and the Republican House quickly approved a plan that has no clear bias for either party. (And it's a good thing they did, because if the redistricting debates had been contentious, imagine how much longer the session would have gone.)

- No. 2: Avoid a government shutdown. Minnesota's recent experience suggests that Iowa's leaders may have been correct in their decision to focus most of their energy on resolving the budget issues rather than on planning contingencies for a possible government shutdown. State leaders in Minnesota - which experienced a partial shutdown six years ago -- spent most of their June preparing for a shutdown that seemed inevitable.

We do believe government officials should hope for the best and plan for the worst, but they shouldn't focus so much on the worst that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

- No. 1: Conference committee work needs to start earlier. Everyone could have guessed that there were going to be major philosophical differences between Republican representatives and the Democratic senators. Everyone could have guessed that both houses would introduce legislation that wouldn't have a prayer of passage in the other house without some major amending. Everyone could have guessed that real legislative progress wouldn't be made until both sides sat down over a conference table and hashed out a workable compromise.

Next year, that process needs to begin much earlier and to take place in public.