This place is crazier than Foxes by a factor of 100.
I've spent most of this last week literally running in circles -- upstairs, downstairs, underground, upstairs again, and *either* there's something so compelling on my disk I *have to* make it into a story *right then* or I'm stuck running in circles for days on end. This week, it was more the latter than the former.
This is perhaps the most demanding thing I've ever done. Physically, mentally, you name it. But I feel 100% good about it.
Started out this week in a hearing on several bills. One of them, appropriately numbered 666, threw me off track for the rest of the week. There was another story I could have covered which would have tied in well with the national coverage on that same day, but the sound from it was lousy. I couldn't do noise reduction without making it sound like it had been recorded in a 300-foot-long sardine can. The sound on the committee debate on bill 666 was *way* better. It was impassioned and intelligent, from both sides, with not too much noise, and not too many coughs. Purely technical considerations made the decision for me: I'd cover a "pretty good" story with "good" sound, rather than a "good" one with "lousy" sound. (Since then I walk around with my equipment ready to go at a moment's notice.)
I edited the sounds and wrote the narration and voiced it. My voicing was extremely "stagey" -- Jim, god bless him, said I sounded "too perfect", thus not hurting my ego, but I knew *exactly* what he *meant*. So while we start talking about how to sound "conversational" (hard when you've spent several hours running like a madman *not* to sound like Walter Winchell), we get to discussing the bill itself.
Winds up the story is OK -- it's of interest -- but it's *way* too shallow. Jim doesn't even have to point it out -- I just start to *see* it as we discuss the bill and all its implications and how it would work if passed into law. (The committee hearings went nowhere so deep.) The story, as it was ready by deadline, was basically "controversial bill passes committee by one vote". True enough -- but the bill itself was so monstrous that once I talked about it with Jim for a while we both realized if it went all the way it would likely spark nationwide riots.
This is *just* one way bad bills get made into law. (There are at least a hundred others.) I had all day to work on this one bill's story, and it took me five hours before I saw it was a total stinker. Lawmakers don't have that much time to spend on each bill -- there are literally dozens, sometimes hundreds of items on their agendas in one given day. I was willing to consider it benign enough not even to notice how bad a law it would be -- until time came to definitely pull the story. But better that I pull it than ruin my credibility right off the bat by shallow reporting on a bad bill that missed the underlying issue completely. It was a learning experience at any rate -- it served me well in learning how to narrate and record and mix, even if it was only single-track.
Interviewed Senator Cisneros about his SB 720 Health Security Act. It's an ongoing story that we desperately *want* to cover, but because there are only two of us at the roundhouse even in the best of times, we tend to focus on *maybe* somewhere between five and seven ongoing stories. It doesn't help I'm only barely learning, but Jim's patience knows no bounds.
Yesterday was interesting.
Went to a meeting between Senators Pinto and Lovejoy and Representative Begaye and Navaho Nation President Joe Shirley and his entourage in committee room 303. There were about 30 Navaho activists oppposing the power plant who'd driven in from Desert Rock. Senator Lovejoy (who replaced Senator Tsosie when the Tribal Council wouldn't let him sit *both* on the Tribal Council *and* the NM Senate on Sovereignty grounds) declared the meeting "closed". I didn't know who she was (she's not in the Legislative Almanac, having been appointed *after* that went to press), and observing decorum as best I knew how, asked her on tape:
"Excuse me, ma'am, who are you?"
"I'm Linda Lovejoy. Senator Linda Lovejoy."
"Thank you, Senator Lovejoy. I'm sorry, I didn't know. Is this a conference committee?"
"This is not a conference committee. It's a closed meeting between the New Mexico and Navaho Nation delegations involved in this issue."
I hope she didn't take offense. I meant none. I just didn't know her, and wanted to be certain we weren't being thrown out by a staffer. Conference committees are (aside from caucuses), to the best of my knowledge, the only meetings permitted to be held in committee rooms in secret. (There are constituent meeting rooms and backrooms for private meetings.) I do wish they'd at least allowed the public to *observe* the meeting, as Senator Griego did in his Conservation Committee hearing on SB 431. (The companion bill in the House is HB 178.) As it was, it looks like the meeting was neither a public nor a private meeting. It seems to fall into a gray area. If anyone knows differently, please, by all means, leave a comment, or email me.
Since I was there as media, and not as an activist, I thanked her and got up and left without further comment. She thanked me for respecting her decision (or whoever's decision it was) which I think is the colegial way Senators have of saying "drop dead". (I could be wrong, maybe she actually meant it. I really don't know.)
Both Senators and Representative Begaye *were* solidly opposed to the $85 million dollar tax break for Sithe Global to build its coal-fired power plant in Desert Rock. After the Senate Conservation Committee hearing last week, the House version of the bill got permanently tabled by that body's Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Senate Bill, however, remains alive.
After much waiting and watching the doors, and watching the activists and lobbyists eventualy scatter to the winds, I wind up running down from the third floor to the first, then up to the fourth, then back down to the second, then back up to the fourth in short order.
Elevators are for wimps.
Representative Begaye granted me an interview in his office later that afternoon.
We'd met in a House Judiciary Committee hearing I decided to cover my first day there, because they were considering a whole slate of Eminent Domain reform bills. I didn't get a story out of that, but I came to rather like Representative Begaye as a person. We chatted about recording equipment -- he, too, apparently had worked in radio at one point in his life.
He explained to me very clearly his concerns about the $85 million dollar tax break for Sithe Global and outlined two proposals for (a) a percentage of the tax break to go to the most affected Navaho communities *within* New Mexico (rather than the Navaho Nation's headquarters in Window Rock, AZ) and (b) highly contingent emissions and carbon capture, sequestration, and tracking standards, on the basis of which he would consider supporting the bill. He was kind enough to supply me with a hard copy of his proposal, which surprised even Jim.
Beginner's luck.
This was perhaps not a 180 degree turn in his position, but it's certainly a 120.
What happened in that secret meeting, no one absolutely knows, who wasn't there.
Because the News Department and Control room have a different staff on weekends, this did not make the Saturday morning news. In conversations with interested parties, I told them what I had been told on tape by Representative Begaye, on the assumption that he fully understood he was talking, not to an idly curious individual, but to the press.
In the meantime -- as I got out of my car to head into the roundhouse, KUNM's
Voces Feministas show was talking about an apparent change of heart on the part of key legislators based on "intelligence" (their word) from within the Capitol. (I'm not a spy! I'm the press! I've got no secrets, baby! NONE!)
Then some of those interested parties, this morning, approached Representative Begaye's secretary about his apparent change of heart. I respect her -- she's caught in the midst of a mælstrom just trying to do her job, with no particular interest in either side of this highly contentious argument. But when Jim and I approached her she said something to the effect that we shouldn't be telling people what the Representative said, and that she'd spoken with him earlier that morning and been told it was completely out of his hands, now.
The 120 degree turn seems to be turning into a pirouette.
I don't mean to make her job harder. But when an elected representative's secretary tells the press that we shouldn't be telling other people what the Representative himself told the press, on tape, let alone the contents of a letter/memorandum/position paper he himself asked her to copy *for* the press, it makes you wonder, don't it?
Senate Bill 431 goes before some Senate committee or other -- I forget which -- either tomorrow or Monday. My guess (I could be totally wrong here, things change minute-by-minute) is that an amendment will be offered and adopted which will allow Representative Begaye in the House and Senators Lovejoy and Pinto to support the bill.
Ka-ching.
I kinda chewed out a peace activist in the cafeteria today. I love her -- she gave me some *great* sound on SJR 5 last week. But she just barely started in on an argument with the cashier who'd said something about not knowing the issues and having to stay apart from them to do her job of running a restaurant. You know -- the usual "but how can you *not* take a stand on this!?" thing. I politely pointed out that if it weren't for these people who came in at 6 AM every day to run the restaurants in the legislature and print the bills and collate the papers and deliver them to each and every legislator each and every morning and throughout the day, that *nothing* would happen, and the legislators wouldn't even be *able* to MAKE THE LAW.
The legislators may work 12-hour days from time to time, but the people who *run* the Capitol building work 15-17 hour days *regularly* and get *nothing* but grief for it.
And a hell of a lot of them listen to KUNM for their news.
I got my press pass yesterday. None's necessary for the house, but the Senate is more tight about 'em. So I'm now a New Mexico Senate credentialled reporter.
SJR 5 -- the Impeachment resolution -- has been through the whole tennis game thing several times the last 48 hours. I stayed 'til 11 last night on a fairly good rumour it *might* bypass Judiciary and hit the Senate floor for a vote. As it happened the last item on the agenda that night was HB 2, a money bill, and so it never got brought up. Senator Ortiz y Pino, who along with Senators Grubesic and McSorely sponsored SJR 5, had a 24-minute teleconference with Elizabeth Somethingorother (I seem to have dumbly forgotten to write down her name) who helped set up the impeachment proceedings for one President Nixon, and was trying to get it into the hands of the Democratic Party "swing" votes on the issue before the committee hearing today.
It was an interesting conversation -- I saw a good part of it, if not all of it.
The swing votes among Senate Dems -- if SJR 5 hits the floor -- are considered to be Jennings, Smith, and Robinson.
There are perhaps one or two Republicans who will vote for impeachment.
I got Senator Smith's assurance that he will vote against impeachment if it hits the floor after last night's recess.
Finally, on a purely personal note, Senator Adair kicks ass. He throws around phrases like "philologically and lexicographically speaking" and casually uses words like "Balkanization" on the floor while other Senators ramble for hours trying to piece together a single coherent thought into something vaguely resembling a sentence using monosyllabic words in something like Old English. He wears finely tailored purple shirts with carefully colour coordinated ties, and signed the emergency special session legislation under Governor Johnson in purple fountain pen ink (it looks more like Shaeffer's than Parker's). He's bigtime into Madison, and I think would be flattered to hear me say there's more than a passing resemblance. (There is.) Discussing bill 666 in committee, he went into a near trance discussing federalism and the purposes and value of the electoral college to a state like New Mexico that eventually opened up what I thought on the bill -- if not to endorse the electoral college, then to realize the bill for what it was: not a solution to the Electoral College's problems. I may not agree with him, but man, he *does* know how to make his case in a way befitting the dignity of the institution. If by any chance he ever shows up at Foxes, he will likely understand my eyebrow movements, nods, and subtle gestures.
He's Republican.
The whole Iglesias thing threatens to blow up in potentilly a big big way when he testifies before the US House this Tuesday. What effect that might have on SJR 5 I do not know.
Heh.
Time will tell.
