Sharp learning curve ahead

There's a pretty light but illuminating piece in the Star Tribune today on three freshwoman legislators and what they think of the legislative process. It reflects some pretty common frustrations that new legislators have. The biggest is probably the realization that the legislature is not like the real world: you don't simply sit down and compromise when you have to (as we are all seeing). This can be a good thing, if it prevents stupid laws from being enacted. But when it is necessary to actually get things done, like with the budget, it kind of falls apart. No business would delay setting its budget for purely political reasons, and for those people who come from that kind of background, it's absurd how the legislature works.

Another myth is that you are going to be an independent person, always voting in the best interests of your district. A lot of times, you are going to be following the orders of your party leadership. Of course, there are a lot of people who are willing to buck leadership, such as the legislators in the article on the DFL side, or Republicans like Ron Erhardt and Dan Dorman. But in the end, the legislature is a political place.

On the Minnesota Politics Discuss list, some people have said that part of the reason compromise is a dirty word these days is because legislators don't socialize in their free time like they used too. To a certain extent, there's truth to this statement. That's not to say that we should go back to the lobbyist-funded junkets of yesteryear, which did provide plenty of conflicts of interest. Instead, one crazy idea could be for the legislature to pay for these kinds of social gatherings where people from different parties can mingle. At least the taxpayers would know who was paying for these events, and it could help these situations.