Nerditorial: Quorums and Governor Walker

"I have a cunning plan."

Baldrick (from virtually any given episode of any given season of the Black Adder.)

It has been... weeks... since I wrote a parli-pro rant. I held off as long as I could.

Latte Republic has already covered Governor Scott "Pun'kin" Walker's embarrassing phone call with someone impersonating one of the infamous and blandly evil Koch brothers. Link here.

But what this absurd phone call revealed was also that the Governor and his staff apparently lack a rudimentary understaning of Parli-Pro.

The Governor confided in Not Dave Koch the following "cunning plan"...

An interesting idea that was brought up to me by my chief of staff, we won't do it until tomorrow, is putting out an appeal to the Democratic leader. I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly. They can recess it... the reason for that, we're verifying it this afternoon, legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum because it's turned out that way. So we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capitol with all 14 of them. My sense is, hell. I'll talk. If they want to yell at me for an hour, I'm used to that. I can deal with that. But I'm not negotiating.

Culled this from Daily Kos. Link here.

Apparently after that Governor Walker will then hold the Democratic party for a ransom of.... One MIIILLION Dollars.

But onto the parli pro rant portion of the Nerditorial.

My rudimentary understanding of quorums is based on Robert's Rules and bear in mind that Robert's Rules covers deliberative bodies smaller than a state legislature, so I am offering this information for ostensible entertainment value. It is likely that the complexities of the Wisconsin State Legislature are sufficiently deep and different enough that my understanding is flawed.

Anywho...

A quorum is understood to mean the minimum number of members required to be present in order to transact business. If you have less than a quorum present, you can't do business. The whole reason that the Wisconsin State Senate is hamstrung by the absence of the 14 Democrats in the State Senate is that the State senate is unable to achieve a quorum without them.

It is also worth noting that the reason the State Senators fled the State of Wisconsin and not just Madison is because the State Legislature has the legal power to compel attendance from its members. Since the state's jurisdiction ends at the state line, the State Senators had to leave the state itself. Weird.

But this notion that once a quorum is achieved then a quorum is not required to be present to keep a session going appears to fly in the face of the concept of a quorum requirement itself. While the bylaws and rules of order of the Wisconsin State Legislature are likely substantively different from a published parliamentary authority, the fact remains that the definition of a quorum is understood to be "the number of members of a group or organization required to be present to transact business legally" according to dictionary.com

I found the rules for the Wisconsin State Legislature online. (Google it.)

I've only made a rudimentary review of the rules, so I may have missed something, but I have not been able to find a groundbreaking special definition of a quorum that turns the commonly understood defintion on its head. A quorum for taking fiscal action is three fifths of the entire membership of the Wisconsin State Senate. And they have to be present for there to be a quorum.

So, Governor Walker, and his Chief of Staff, apparently share a stunning lack of understanding of how the public business gets done on the most basic level.

It is good to be blessed with an adversary who is also an idiot. It is even better to be blessed with an adversary who doesn't realize that everyone else isn't as stupid as he is.

One sign of leadership is a willingness to hire people who know more than you know about the job that you need that person to do. This goes back to the legend of Robin Hood, whose Merry Men had to best him in at least one relevant skill before they could work for him. That Governor Walker doesn't know what a quorum means is less relevant and telling than the fact that he picked out a chief of staff who doesn't know any more than he does.

Governor Walker is the Alpha Dumb-Ass of the Executive Branch in Wisconsin. Woe unto those who put him in office.