Omigod, state government has shut down! Are you prepared for the end of life as we know it, as the big, gaping hole of anarchy opens wide to swallow us all? Actually, the longer the Democrats stay away, the less mischief the General Assembly can create. Any big or important bills that missed deadlines for action can be introduced as amendments later on, so nothing really crucial is likely to be left undone. Maybe that's why Gov. Daniels is so nonchalant:
Democrats decamped to a hotel in Urbana, Ill. — 125 miles from Indianapolis — out of concern that Gov. Mitch Daniels might send state troopers to bring them back to the Statehouse. The Republican governor said he doesn't plan to do that.
"I trust that people's consciences will bring them back to work," Daniels said. "I choose to believe that our friends in the minority will, having made their point, come back and do their duty and the jobs they are paid to do."
Or maybe this is an indication of just how much he dislikes the proposed right-to-work legislation the Democrats have been protesting. Doubt if he'd be this low key if the Democratic desertion threatened passage of his education reforms.
He is right, though, in suggesting that what Democrats are doing is perfectly legitimate. Call them crybabies or childish if you want, but they're making use of the high quorum number --a two-thirds majority -- established by the Indiana constitution. This is one of those cases, as with filibuster issues in the U.S. Senate, in which one side lambastes the other for using an "unfair tactic" shamelessly ignoring the fact that it will has used the same tactic and probably will again.
One of the nonprofit boards I served on had such a high quorum requirement, and we had trouble doing business too many times. So we voted to change our definition of quorum to "the number of board members present for the meeting." Kinda defeated the whole concept, but at least we started getting things done.
