Spin Control: Lawmakers take stabs at humor from time to time
Few people think of it as a place of lighthearted humor, although last week some legislators did their best to brighten the mood at various points.
Friday’s debate over the need for better audits of state agencies featured the usual clash between those who thought the Legislature needs to do a better job of holding agencies accountable and those who thought the Legislature should hold itself accountable on things like the Supreme Court contempt order over adequate money for public schools. Sen. Brian Dansel, R-Republic, tried to shrug off that $100,000-a-day fine for contempt by citing that eminent source of legal scholarship, the 1978 movie “Animal House.”
“We’re putting ourselves on double secret probation,” Dansel said. “We’re fining ourselves and putting it back in an account where we’ll spend it at a later time.”
That’s not exactly what Dean Wormer had in mind for the Delta House. But in any case, Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, wasn’t going to let that pass unchallenged: “Let’s stop acting like we’re a frat house and get it together and get our work done.”
Presiding at the rostrum, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen said he wanted to “make it crystal clear to Sen. Rolfes and Sen. Dansel that there will be no food fights on the floor or in the cafeteria.”
Attempts at humor can break out at unpredictable moments, like when the House considered a bill defining the authority of county coroners to issue arrest warrants. Coroners, it seems, are a good target for jokes. Rep. Brad Klippert, R-Kennewick, the bill’s sponsor, couldn’t stop the puns.
“I’ve been dying for it to get here. I’m glad it wasn’t buried under amendments. I’m glad it wasn’t dead on arrival in Rules,” Klippert said, adding he hoped members could “revive the spirit within you to vote yes.”
Rep. Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said she had to vote for something supported by the Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners, whose acronym WACME is pronounced whack-me. “It’s hard not to endorse something from whack-me,” she said.
Rep. Maureen Walsh, R-Walla Walla, closed off debate with “our coroners are the last ones to let us down.”
Ba-dum, dum. Clearly, legislators should not quit their part-time day jobs to go out on the stand-up circuit.
Baby boom
Keying off the NFL’s Super Bowl commercial that pointed out a spike in births in the home towns of previous games’ winners some nine months after the game, Rep. Mark Hargrove, R-Covington, pointed out that four legislators are expecting babies nine months after the end of last year’s triple overtime session, all of whom may have had reason to celebrate the passage of a major transportation package they supported. The email made the rounds Friday and eventually was read on the Senate floor.
“Too much information,” Rolfes said.
Color coded
Something else the public might not realize about the Legislature is it pushed around tons of paper. First, there are a couple thousand bills, some of them many pages long, that have to be printed. Then there are amendments, sometimes so many that legislative staff presents them on colored paper to help lawmakers keep track.
The descriptions of those colors raised eyebrows recently in the Commerce and Labor Committee as lawmakers pushed through bills and amendments ahead of a deadline. One amendment was on cherry, staff said. Sen. Mike Baumgartner, R-Spokane, sorted through his stack until finding the proper paper, which he described in the more familiar “pink.”
The next was on orchid. “Purple,” Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, translated. There were also amendments on magenta, salmon, goldenrod and ivory. That last one probably should be renamed, given the state’s ban on ivory passed by voters last year.
Say what?
“Transportation is a nonpartisan issue,” Sen. Ann Rivers, R-Vancouver, said in a debate over an appointment to the state Transportation Commission. Could’ve fooled everybody last week when the Senate majority voted to dump Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson.
“I think if you asked most people in the state of Washington ‘Did you have confidence in the Department of Corrections based on recent revelations, the answer would be no. If you asked the same question about the Department of Transportation, most Washingtonians would answer no, they did not have confidence in Secretary Peterson… And that’s why it was necessary on Friday to do what the Senate did,” said Sen. Steve O’Ban, R-Pierce County.
Perhaps, but if the standard is going to be “does the public have confidence in how you’re doing your job?” legislators might all be on the street.
Spin Control, a weekly column by Olympia reporter Jim Camden, also appears online with daily items and reader comments at www.spokesman.com/blogs/spincontrol.