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[Vactor]

Back home.

Those of you who read the article posted earlier would already know this, but today the minority party senators did not attend session, This left the senate one vote short of having a quorum for a budget bill, which is 3/5ths.  On non-fiscal bills a simple majority is required.  We were under a call of the house, which is a rule, where if 5 senators desire, they can shut down the proceedings until all Senators have been brought to the floor, no Senators may leave the Senate until all 33 Senators are present.  This lasted until about 4:00ish, when the Senators closed the session down and were escorted out of the building.

I did end up doing the door again, which while quite exhausting and more chaotic was much easier than staffing the hearings over the last few days.  Since only legislators and staff (and press) are allowed inside the Senate, I spent the day checking press credentials and staff ids.  A handful of people would come up and ask questions, and quite a few people got a bit of a civics lecture from me, explaining some of the complexities of how the Senate conducts business.

It did get a bit ugly in the late morning when protesters attempted to congest the entrance to the Senate to prevent Senators from arriving on the floor.  Their attempts were slightly misguided, and were mostly directed at the completely wrong people.  At one point I did lean across my table and told people the man they were chanting at was a non-partisan committee clerk.  They later staged a sit-in in various hallways to try to prevent us from moving people around the building.  This was only mildly successful, as our capitol is a bit of a maze, and we all work there, and know how to get around.

Some of my co-workers had some bad encounters with protesters who, not knowing who we are and what we do, saw people dressed in blazers and ties, and assumed they were their opposition.  One girl got shaken, and a guy got hit, i'm not sure how badly.  We started having our pages take off their blazers and ties when they left the floor.

By late afternoon this had calmed down a bit, and the area in front of the Senate became deserted once the session was postponed, as the protesters made their way back into the rotunda.

I had a ton of cameras pointed toward me throughout the day, stills and video, i'm not sure if people just find me an interesting picture, or if they were trying to keep me in line by recording me, one of my co-workers yesterday had a camera shoved in his face as he was giving a lady directions, and completely disarmed the recorder with his pleasant helpfulness when they demanded to know what he had just told her.  The biggest thing I've noticed is that people have some incredible misconceptions of government.

So once again, I'm back to work tomorrow.  The protesters are still in the building, and a group of senators are still in another state.  I don't know what will happen tomorrow, I only hope people continue to keep their cool.  I think out of the 25,000 protesters today, there were 9 citations issued, which is the first day there were any.

I will admit I shuddered when I saw a single 10-12 year old strolling around with a guy fawkes mask.

edit: my boss made the new york times, the hilarious part is that we constantly tease him because he is almost always sweating, regardless of the temp.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us/18wisconsin.html?_r=1&ref=politics

[Aqizzar]

Might I suggest bringing a bullhorn for crowd control?  And maybe some big obvious "STAFF" badges to avoid unpleasant confusion.  In all seriousness, I'm curious what the law-enforcement presence looked like and did, given that I've heard the police officers union joined the protesters.  Or maybe didn't since they were among the only public employee unions not facing any legislation.  Heck, maybe you can clear that up; did you see them there?

Likewise, any word about the legal actions taken to force those 14 Democrats back into the Senate?  Since they're out of the state, and the state constitution doesn't actually describe any provision for how they can be compelled to go back to work, I bet the Sergeant at Arms is pulling his hair right now trying to answer questions.  AH, upon reading the article, the Sergeant at Arms is your boss.  Damn, what a sorry job at a time like this.

I will admit I shuddered when I saw a single 10-12 year old strolling around with a guy fawkes mask.

Oh Fuck, the Internet is here.  And it's getting younger?

[Sowelu]

Oh man.

These are really interesting reads, thank you for these posts.

[Vactor]

Might I suggest bringing a bullhorn for crowd control?  And maybe some big obvious "STAFF" badges to avoid unpleasant confusion.  In all seriousness, I'm curious what the law-enforcement presence looked like and did, given that I've heard the police officers union joined the protesters.  Or maybe didn't since they were among the only public employee unions not facing any legislation.  Heck, maybe you can clear that up; did you see them there?

Likewise, any word about the legal actions taken to force those 14 Democrats back into the Senate?  Since they're out of the state, and the state constitution doesn't actually describe any provision for how they can be compelled to go back to work, I bet the Sergeant at Arms is pulling his hair right now trying to answer questions.

I will admit I shuddered when I saw a single 10-12 year old strolling around with a guy fawkes mask.

Oh Fuck, the Internet is here.  And it's getting younger?

We do wear sgt at arms name plates, but people were getting to the point where they wanted to express their anger to anybody they could, I heard of one staffer being chewed out, while sobbing that her senator was one of the opponents to the bill.  As far as law enforcement, we've had officers from just about every type of jurisdiction assisting us throughout this week.  There are no police in the state that have jurisdiction over the senate floor, as that is our domain, free from control by the governor.  So they were pretty much just there to do what I asked them to, give the doors a bit more of a presence, and be prepared to make sure nobody gets hurt if things turn ugly.

It was a really unique situation the other day during the executive session after the rabble rouser i mentioned earlier was trying to get people to charge the door, I had two state troopers, a pair of sheriff's deputies, a game warden and a madison police officer all hanging out to make sure I could do my job.  So generally speaking, the police have been doing a great job working with us in a non-protest capacity.

As far as participating in the protest, today is the first day that I heard of police unions joining in the protest, as they arrived today with bottled water and trays full of hotdogs for the other protesters.  This is especially noteworthy, as the police and firefighters were intentionally omitted from the benefit and unionizing rights cut.  The firefighters union had been showing up for days to great applause for their solidarity with the other unions, and now the police union has joined in.  The on duty officers that are assisting us are not participating, and remain impartial and have been directed to show extreme permissiveness with the protest.

As to the possible solutions to this stalemate, i'm sure the legal minds of the state of Wisconsin are puzzling through this as we speak, but to my knowledge, our office is not equipped to make a foray into another state to retrieve the senators, and probably would be considered outside of our jurisdiction.  The state patrol, which has been called upon in the past to detain fleeing senators definitely do not have jurisdiction.  It may be possible for the governor of the host state to send their own police force to eject them from the state, but it would be unlikely that one friendly to their cause would do so.  There is no way for federal authorities to get involved, as the senators haven't committed a crime, so a federal judge would not be able to issue a warrant for their arrest. 

As to the bull horn, it would probably not be keeping with the decorum of the senate to use one, and we seem to be keeping things in order through calm helpfulness and patience.  The issues with pages being accosted happened on other floors where we don't have a static presence.

[Aqizzar]

Well, I see two possibilities to the stalemate legality.  Either the state in question could have them extradited back to Wisconsin like you said, and of course nobody knows where they are yet, and they almost certainly decided to hole up somewhere safe from just that possibility.

The other conspiratorial answer I can see is that the governor could find some pliant law enforcement, and just have them go detain and return the Senators anyway, jurisdiction be damned.  The Senate could be brought back in session and hold votes, and the requisite false-arrest and so forth charges would be months and years down the road.  That said, it sounds pretty ridiculous.

I do have to add that I find it weird how everyone is saying this is totally unprecedented, of a state legislature failing to meet quorum because the opposition left.  The Democrats in the Texas state house did the same thing like ten years ago, but they didn't do it in secret.

[Zrk2]

As to the bull horn, it would probably not be keeping with the decorum of the senate to use one, and we seem to be keeping things in order through calm helpfulness and patience.  The issues with pages being accosted happened on other floors where we don't have a static presence.

...

Decorum in politics? We gave up on that a long time ago in Canada. Our MPs routinely yell at each other in the House of Commons.

[Retro]

As to the bull horn, it would probably not be keeping with the decorum of the senate to use one, and we seem to be keeping things in order through calm helpfulness and patience.  The issues with pages being accosted happened on other floors where we don't have a static presence.

...

Decorum in politics? We gave up on that a long time ago in Canada. Our MPs routinely yell at each other in the House of Commons.

They don't really actually have positions on things any more. Election season is just a bunch of baseless and totally irrelevant-to-any-political-issue-whatsoever mudslinging. It's... really embarrassing.

[Burnt Pies]

England's house of Commons frequently sounds like a classroom full of 12 year olds. It's almost funny hearing how damn rude and noisy they are.

[mainiac]

Well in UK model parliamentary systems, the actual members of government dont matter very much since the power lies with the majority party.  If we adopted the Canadian rules of legislature, I think it would take about 5 minutes for American politicians to start dueling in the Senate.  The only thing holding them back right now is the prospect that with the right shake of the dice they might get to be the one sitting in the coveted tie breaker vote chair next congress and they dont want to fuck that up by acting as petty and worthless as they are.

[Vactor]

Today was slightly calmer for us, the missing senators were still absent, and the Assembly (lower house) was in session taking up their own version of the bill.

We withdrew our presence almost entirely into the chambers, and capitol police blocked off the hallway in front of the entrance to the senate, to prevent the congestion that occurred yesterday.

The Senate came to order, and did not have a quorum to pass the bill, and again went to call of the house.  For a while they did not want the Sergeant at Arms to leave the building and were going to send me to the minority leaders house with a state trooper.  Eventually because of the press attention, they decided to have my boss go instead.  Despite the suspicions of the majority party, the Senator was not home.  They stood informal for most of the day before adjourning at about 1:30 this afternoon.

Even if the Minority leader had been home, the law was very vauge, saying only that the Senators may be compelled to return by the Sergeant at Arms. 

The state patrol, which has been called upon in the past to detain fleeing senators

Never thought I'd read this phrase in nonfiction.

something like this has happened in the US senate before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum

As to the decorum of the Senate, our Assembly is a more rowdy house, but the Senate has rather strict rules of decorum, and a slow enough turn over rate that they are pretty commonly adhered to.  All speech and debate is addressed to the president of the senate, they do not refer to each other by name, only by district number (i.e. gentleman from the 5th)  Men must wear a jacket, and they are not allowed to impugn the integrity of another member of the Senate.

I think it is unprecedented in the Wisconsin Legislature, there has always been a lot of legislative courtesy and respectful tradition.  I'm very curious what the rest of this biennium will hold as far as how the Senators will treat one another, and in the future, if control flips.

[olemars]

That was last year. They were passing something important and all the whitehaired old men went to have a nap.

[Vactor]

Additional Drama unfolded in the Assembly this evening:

http://www.wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3759

I would recommend watching "Assembly Floor Session (Part 4)"  If you think the first part is dramatic, once they stand informal skip ahead until about 14:30 when they return to order.

[Zrk2]

'You might think that since you've been elected to the legislature you can do what you damn well please, BUT YOU CAN'T!' *Champion*

[Vactor]

Additional Drama unfolded in the Assembly this evening:

http://www.wiseye.org/Programming/VideoArchive/EventDetail.aspx?evhdid=3759

I would recommend watching "Assembly Floor Session (Part 4)"  If you think the first part is dramatic, once they stand informal skip ahead until about 14:30 when they return to order.

To give you guys some context of what was going on, a bill needs to be given 3 readings before being voted upon. The first reading is given when it is assigned to committee, the second when it is brought to the floor.  At this point it is in the amendable stage, where amendments may be offered, debated, and can end up tabled, adopted, or rejected.  There were three amendments before the Assembly.  Amendments 1, 2, and 3. The Assembly was called to order prior to its scheduled time, they adopted their friendly amendment 1, and ignored amendments 2 and 3.  They suspended their rules in order to engross the bill, and not give it its first or second reading, and go right to the third.  They also avoided recognizing the minority members who were standing to be recognized and who were objecting to the unanimous consent request. 

The Assembly normally takes up the bill that is passed out of the Senate, but has moved ahead with its own bill.

Once the bill is given its 3rd reading there can be no more amendments. The bill must be voted on, which was the immediate next step once the relating clause was read by the chief clerk.  Its interesting that you can see someone giving the speaker the hurry up signal earlier just before Rep. Hintz ran onto the floor, as the speaker then tries to play it down that it was an honest mistake, and that he thought they wouldn't show up and wanted to get on with things. 

I've tried to present this whole affair as neutrally as I present it to people when i'm working, but without adherence to its rules, there is no Assembly, the government that we have is predicated on the respect of, and adherence to the rules of governing.  A committee may be run at the discretion of a chair, but a floor session is not undertaken at the pleasure of the speaker. 

Part of what is so upsetting about what you see here is knowing what is actually happening, it seems like some simple procedural things, but they were seconds away from passing this bill before they stopped, and had steamrolled through the actual deliberative parts of the debate.

Adjournment was probably a good idea though, as there were 35,000 protesters outside that room.

[Aklyon]

I read it and then I was like "Why is a small South American woman working as a doorguard? "

Then I noticed it was Vactor and not Vector. :p

Vactor is not Vester is not Vector.

I, Vector, am the math nerd (small, female, but not a Pacific Islander).
Vester is the Filipina.
Vactor is the OP.

Why does Bay12 have so many similar named people?