Divisive week ends in House ‘detente’

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Updated: February 17, 2012 8:14AM

INDIANAPOLIS — Cooler heads are prevailing for now in Indiana’s General Assembly over contentious right-to-work legislation.

But first they had to let off some steam.

The battle over a Republican plan to ban unions from collecting mandatory fees for representing workers has brought hundreds of union protesters to the Statehouse almost daily, chanting and booing as lawmakers meet all day.

That emotional clamor has usually been limited to the hallways of the Statehouse. But it seeped into the House chamber last Tuesday beginning with an 8:30 a.m. voting session one Democrat compared to snuffing out the “light of Democracy” and ending with more than a dozen Democrats boycotting Gov. Mitch Daniels final State of the State speech.

At times the partisan split has seemed more Congressional than Hoosier, with threats of a legislative shutdown hanging over lawmakers’ heads and negotiations at a standstill. It was a far cry from the more gentile political atmosphere where party leaders brief each other ahead of major announcements and let opposition party staff into press conferences. And that is not the norm in every state capital.

During the committee vote on right-to-work legislation last Tuesday Rep. David Niezgodski, D-South Bend, and Rep. Douglas Gutwein, R-Francesville, got in a shouting match about whether amendments would be considered for the proposal. After Gutwein pushed the bill through without considering any changes, the five Democrats on the panel hounded him saying he was stomping on the democratic process.

The outburst spurred Democrats to resume a boycott they had ended the day before. It also led more than a dozen of them to skip Daniels’ State of the State address later that day in protest of his ardent support of the measure.

Asked after Daniels’ speech whether Democrats were disrespectful of the governor, Bosma said “probably.” He said he couldn’t remember any time a group of lawmakers, Democrat or Republican, boycotted any governor’s annual address.

Bosma reviewed the video of the shouting match and later walked the hundred or so feet from his office to Bauer’s to talk about it. He said he told Bauer the tone was getting to rancorous and asked if they bring some decorum back into the House. The result was an agreement that Democrats would end their boycott through Tuesday in exchange for a guarantee that amendments to the legislation.

But that truce almost broke down immediately. Not long after the agreement was reached Democrats noticed that Rep. Rich McClain, R-Logansport, had introduced a separate bill to send right-to-work to a referendum. Under Indiana House rules the separate bill would give Bosma the option to bar consideration of any amendments that do the same thing as the bill.

Bauer thought it may be a dirty trick from Bosma and called a press conference to warn House Republicans that if they used a parliamentary tactic to block a vote on their referendum amendment, they would boycott again. Bosma later guaranteed Democrats they would get their chance to send right-to-work to a referendum.

Shortly before the session started, Bosma pointed to a framed print in his office of the British World War II poster: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” That has been his motto in dealing with the right-to-work battle with Democrats.

“This isn’t my first rodeo in this regard, and this is Rep. Bauer’s first exercise of organized absence,” Bosma said last week. “We went through a U.S.-record-breaking 35 days of it last year. So I had a lot of time to think about it and how to respond to it and respond calmly and responsibly.”

Talking about reminded Bauer’s antics reminded Bosma of a secret wager his wife and two children used to make around Christmas.

“I said last year that their (Democrats’) goal was to get me to blow, and that’s a little bit of a family joke,” he said. “Most years when we put Christmas lights on the Christmas tree for years there was a secret bet among the kids and Cheryl as to when Dad would blow, because the bulbs would be out, and then the whole thing was out, and then you had to throw it all out,” Bosma said

“Once I caught onto that I won the bet,” he said.

But Bosma will need to keep his cool for awhile, at least by Bauer’s indication. The Democratic leader quoted Robert Frost and hinted at a different motto for House Democrats last week: “‘But I have promises to keep, and many miles to go before I sleep.’”

“We had come to the conclusion, and we did several weeks ago, that it would be very difficult to beat this bill,” Bauer told the Associated Press. The answer they came up with was fighting to put the measure before voters.

That vote, to put right-to-work on the ballot, will take place Tuesday. After that the durability of the House truce should become clearer. Although each side sounds like it’s ready for a long slog.