Wisconsin Wednesday: The People's Legislature

I think what I like most about Ed Garvey is that he shares my sense of humor. Or that I share his. ("Our credibility comes from the fact that we're not running for anything," he said. "Well, I'm thinking about running for the car.")

I spent my day Saturday with Ed at the People's Legislature in their fourth outing (following Madison, LaCrosse, and Cable). We met first in the Bruce Guadalupe school's cafegymnatorium; I walked in to a sea of 500 empty (and, I later learned, very uncomfortable) resin chairs. The chairs ended up staying mostly empty; the organizers tell me that there were 200 people there overall, but the steady stream of people in and out meant that there weren't more than 100 at a time in the room. It was also a starkly white crowd. As time went on, more non-white folks came in, but it stayed primarily white. There was a great range of age and socio-economic status (near as I could tell), though, and a very large contingent of Unitarians.

TPL is all about revolt against the lobbyist-owned legislature in Madison. There are 803 paid lobbyists in Madison (at last count), for 132 legislators. That's a half-dozen lobbyists per. The original idea was that if we could get 804 unpaid citizen lobbyists (the extra person is to guarantee a win if it came down to tug of war) to go to Madison, then they'd have to listen, right?

The morning began with a half-dozen speakers, including Ed Garvey. The other speakers:

1. Rev. Tucker Jones, from the Free Will Community Baptist Church, who also lamented the poor minority turnout, which kind of tied into the story he told about the poor minority presence at all levels of government. He told the story about working for the state Department of Workforce Development back in the 1980s when it had a different name. He was the only African American who worked there then, and since he left there hasn't been another hired.
   
   
2. Nino Amato, from the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group. He really laid the groundwork for what the People's Legislature is all about by opening with the story of Chvala and Jensen and others who, two-and-a-half years ago, were charged with pretty massive levels of corruption. To date, nothing has happened. Scooter Jensen is sitting on the Joint Finance Committee even now. We have this cloud of corruption (in his words) just hovering over Madison. He regaled us with archetypical love stories: Lobbyist/ industry buys legislature; lobbyist/ industry drafts bill; bill introduced by in-pocket legislature; hearing the next day without time to get public there; bill passes; lobbyist/ industry live happily ever after.
   
   
3. Joe McClain, who talked about some of the history of organizing the African American community in Milwaukee.
   
   
4. Lauri Wynn, who reminded us of how difficult it is to change the locus of power. It doesn't just change hands; no one gives it up willingly. If you don't have the money to take it, you need the people to take the power. She also told the story--and I have heard it several times before--about how the first thing you do every morning is an inherently political activity: You flush the toilet. Think about everything political that's connected to the act of flushing the toilet. Where does the water (et al.) go when you flush? What happens to it? Where does the water come from that refills the toilet, so you can flush the next time? So anyone who claims that they have no connection to the political process either doesn't flush (eeww) or is lying. We all have a stake.
   
   
5. Mike McCabe, from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, closed this first part of the program. Had this been a rock concert, he would have been the headliner bringing the house down. In fact, he got the only standing ovation of the morning.
   
   McCabe started by asking a series of questions: "How many of you voted in the last election?" Nearly every hand in the room went up. "How many of you gave money in the last election?" Still, most every hand. "How many of you gave more than $500?" A dozen or so hands. "To just one candidate?" One hand left up in a roomful of people, and it was Ed Garvey's. McCabe pointed out then how this was indicative of the relative lack of power in the room. Sure, we were all regular voters and activists, but when our Wisconsin politicians have a choice of listening to a voter or listening to a donor, you know as well as I that they take door number two.
   
   McCabe noted how political donations have sullied Wisconsin, everything from utility companies usurping county government to the way a single, unelected official can direct millions of dollars to an Enron-accounting, off-shore tax-evading, under-FEC-investigation, Apartheid-supporting, Wisconsin-ripping-off company to compile that most precious of resources, our state voter lists.
   
   McCabe went on to discuss how the single biggest threat to our democracy in Wisconsin--even after all of that!--is elections and campaigns in which the results are utterly predetermined, either through big money or gerrymandering. Even if the outcome of an election is not entirely certain, you can be certain of who the "winners" will be; think about the dozens of people who gave thousands of dollars to both Scott McCallum and Jim Doyle, occasionally even on the same day! In that 2002 governor's race, not counting Ed Thompson's third-party bid, Doyle and McCallum spent $23 million. Three-quarters of that $23 million was contributed by just 1100 individuals. (2006 will not be any better.)
   
   As to gerrymandering, the Assembly and Senate districts are so rigged that a full 2.2 million Wisconsin voters--and I was one of them!--had no real choice in the November election. The intent of a Democracy is that voters are supposed to choose their representatives; here in Wisconsin, we have representatives drawing the maps to choose their voters.
   
   McCabe's final points concerned the politics of fear. We're living in what he (and I'm sure he got this from somebody) calls a "second period of major economic relocation." A century ago, we were moving from the farm to the factory. Today we're moving from the factory to . . . well, nobody knows. And that's the problem. Anyone can come in and play on that uncertainty. These "rewinders," as McCabe refers to them, sell people on the idea of a well-known past over an undetermined future. And that well-known past will always win unless someone can come along and offer a compelling alternative vision for the future. And no one is offering that. Because, well, there's no money in it, for one thing

After the speechifying, they threw open in the microphones for an "open forum." Sadly, as is usually the case, whenever they are open mics too many people feel they have to say something, even when they have nothing to say. I'm not, of course, in favor of shutting up or shutting out the average voter; it's just that the People's Legislature is designed around a pretty significant, if singular, issue, the reform of the Madison legislative process. Once the mics were open, though, people wanted to plug their own pet issues and wander off on unrelated rants.

Then came lunch (mmmmm, school cafeteria hot dogs), and the forum for the afternoon followed. The discussion centered on the four resolutions the first People's Legislature wrote and ratified in January. (We also ratified them, unanimously.) Here they are, with my own commentary and discussion:

1. Campaign finance reform. We will never have a people's legislature if the people aren't the ones buying it. Some of you may remember Senate Bill 46's ignoble death earlier this spring; Mike McCabe said that this was a good thing. Senator Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) said the right sorts of things when it died ("the current system 'corrupts' legislative leaders, who he said become so intent on raising money and winning on election day that they have to barter for cash in ways that destroy the Legislature's integrity"), but the bill was stripped key provisions offered in earlier legislative sessions. For one, it did not require full public financing of campaigns. If you want to stop the over-dependence on donor cash, you need to provide an attractive alternative to the donor cash. For another, it did not require full disclosure on non-candidate advertising.
   
   The bill to support, McCabe says, is AB392 (.pdf), which is co-sponsored by my guy in the Senate, Tim Carpenter, along with a dozen other legislators. It's an 83-page bill, but it's the real thing.
   
   The most important thing right now is to change Wisconsin's political culture. Currently, you're loooked at like an oddball if you want to run for office but have no money (see Ed Garvey 1998 or Peg Lautenschlager 2006). In places that have enacted comprehensive campaign finance reform--Maine and Arizona, for example, who achieved reform only through citizens' ballot initiatives--you're the crazy one if you're trying to run for office with millions. This will bring normal, non-megalomaniacal people back into politics. It might mean a return to the two-party system (from the seeming one we have now).
   
   I was reminded, in this discussion, that my union, WEA, has been pretty reluctant when it comes to campaign finance reform. In part, it's because they are among the worst offenders (though, seriously, how much support for unions has their campaign money bought in Madison?). If I had the time I would run as a delegate to the WEA representative assembly and bring up the issue. Maybe next year.
   
   
2. Redistricting reform. This is a bug that's been growing under my saddle for some time now. How is it that a state that votes 50-50 in presidential elections, elects a Democrat with less than 50% for governor, and elects two Democratic US senators has a legislature that is nearly 2-1 Republican? (This partisan rhetoric is all me, not the People's Legislature). Without the threat of real competition, our legislators will never start being responsive to the people--you and me--whom they supposedly represent.
   
   Now, I'm represented by two people who are almost always unopposed, Josh Zepnick and Tim Carpenter. And in general, I feel they do a good job, especially Zepnick. But they could be better, and I think the occasional threat of a primary or general election challenge would keep them more on their toes.
   
   The People's Legislature actually recommends the system they have for non-partisan, independent redistricting in Iowa. The legislation we should support here is Assembly Joint Resolution 22 (.pdf).
   
   
3. Ethics enforcement, and combining ethics board and elections boards. Right now the situation in Madison is very fox-henhouse; the ethics and elections boards are appointed by the people in power that they are supposed to be monitoring. And, in the case of the ethics board, they have to ask for new funds every time they want to investigate. Imagine being the guy who had to go to Brian Burke--co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee--to ask for money to investigate him.
   
   Senate Bill 1 eliminates the elections board and creates an independent accountability board that comes with its own significant enforcement budget. Support it, and encourage your legislators to, as well.
   
   
4. Maintain local fiscal control. Yes, in fact, this is an anti-TABOR and anti-tax freeze stance, rather than a "pro-something new" reform stance. But the logic behind this is very simple: It's a lot harder for Wisconsin's big money interests to buy every single town or village board, to buy every school board, to buy every county board member, to buy every alder. If they only need to buy 132 legislators and one governor (since the locals have no more control), the power will just keep getting concentrated in the hands of the few. That's not democracy.

So if you are a Wisconsinite who supports these four things, go sign the petition supporting these reforms. The goal is 50,000 Wisconsinite signatures (including those on- and off-line). If you aren't from here but support these goals, consider starting some kind of "People's Legislature" campaign in your own state.

The next step for Wisconsin's TPL is a few more meetings like this one around the state, and then Fighting Bob Fest September 10. Shortly thereafter, we're going to Madison in large numbers to sit-in, or maybe levitate the capitol, something big, until they listen.

And they will listen. We are, after all, the people.