news-record.com

When I took a moment to check in with the online world today, the following Facebook message from House Speaker Thom Tillis caught my attention:

Now that I have dropped my Charlotte Observer home delivery subscription, I have set up Google Alerts which search various newspapers across the state for areas of interest. Google sends me a message every morning and I just CLICK and read. For those who read the paper for the obituaries, you can read them online for free ...

And then I ran across this one.

Tomorrow will be the last day I receive the Charlotte Observer at home after nearly 14 years. I decided if the Charlotte Observer is going to reduce itself to being a liberal blog, I'll just read it online like I do ProgressNC, BlueNC, and the like. They are all kind of like road kill--you try not to look at, you do anyway, then you regret it.

So it turns out the Speaker doesn’t like how “midnight madness” at the General Assembly was portrayed in newspapers this week. (Click here to link to my write-though. I’m guessing he didn’t like that much either.)

Tillis was so bothered by the news coverage that he wrote an e-mail to supporters explaining why House Republicans did what they did. (Click here to read that.)

Tillis’ basic contention is that we scruffy media types got it wrong in reporting on early morning session. He points to a television report by News 14’s Loretta Boniti as an example of balanced coverage (link). In fact, I agree with Tillis that Loretta’s was one of several good ones on the day. But there are a few things to point out in the package that make me wonder why Tillis thinks the News 14 broadcast makes him look any better than the rest of us, um, bloggers:

• Tillis probably likes the fact that Loretta reported that an adjournment resolution had been used to change the scope of an existing session in the past. That’s true.
  
  BUT that resolution was not heard during a veto override session. Yes, the legislature was back in Raleigh because of a veto. But the governor called them back into a separate, if concurrent, special session as well to draft a compromise to end the veto standoff. So there was no question about that language in the constitution that says veto override sessions can only handle “bills” that the governor vetoed.
  
  Also, the session parameters they were adjusting at the time was months, not minutes, away. So the situation was not completely analogous.
   
• Take a look at Loretta’s tape. That bit with Rules Chairman Tim Moore talking happened sometime after 9 p.m. Moore is saying in that clip that it would just be good to have an extra adjournment resolution around to have "some options" but he doesn't know what it might be used for. In fact, at that point in the evening (about three hours before the 12:45 a.m. session began) no Republican in the know would admit on the record that a special session was coming.
  
  Does it really make you look good to have a senior member of your leadership team intentionally misleading a room full of people?
   
• Tillis makes a great deal of the fact that neither Rep. Womble’s nor Rep. Wainwright’s absence wouldn’t have changed the numbers. That’s true, up to a point. However, if Perdue had not officially appointed Rep. Trudi Walend that night, the Republicans would not have been in a position to cast the override vote. You can make a lot of arguments about numbers.
  
  What Democrats seemed to be most upset about is that Republicans were taking a run at overriding the Racial Justice Act, which had a passion of Womble's, when he was in no shape to weigh in on the matter. I think that's a fair point.
   
• Speaking of Walend, Loretta mentions that Republicans were outraged that Perdue wasn’t seating Walend right away. Perdue made the case – cynically or not – that she had seven days to appoint the new representative and that she could not make that appointment until certain public disclosure paperwork was filed. To cry foul about Perdue’s actions, which were clearly in bounds, and then get upset when people question how that midnight session came about seems to be a bit of wanting your cake and eating it too.

I will let folks with law degrees wrestle over whether the manner in which the session was called was legal. I’m inclined to think that previous General Assemblies probably gave themselves all the wiggle room in the world and at the end of the day no court is going to want to wade into this mess. But I understand the arguments by people who think the session was unconstitutional or at least not right.

But all the legal mumbo jump isn't really the point, is it? Let’s say that everything was done happened completely within the letter of the law.

When lawmakers returned to Raleigh on Wednesday, they were there to do one thing -- the Racial Justice Act repeal veto override. There was no official notice than anything else would be taken up until after 11 p.m. at night. When reporters, lobbyists and lawmakers from the minority party asked -- repeatedly -- what was going on, they were not given honest answers. When notice came, it was for a session that was to occur when most normal folks are snug in their beds.

So notice of the vote came at a point most people were turning out the lights or tuning in the Late Show. The vote was taken before most of those people woke up and was held a time when pretty much no newspaper in the state could give an account of what happened in time for any edition that was to hit the driveway that morning.

That isn’t open, transparent government as anyone would define it. I understand Tillis' point about all vetoes being unfinished business at any time. But that point runs up against good common sense and plain English understandings about how and when legislative sessions are called and run.

Think about your high school civics class: did anyone ever mention splicing the different deffinitions between bills and resolutions so that a legislative session could be called in teh middle of the night? 

This the type of thing that aggravates the “government watchdog” reflex in a lot of us reporters. And so we reported what happened. And then the editorial pages weighed in. And now voters and readers get to decide the virtues and vices in all this. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Tillis played hard ball and his team won. Good on him. But if he's going to play rough and tumble, shouldn't expect a bit of push back? The game was played in the middle of the night and sausage making doesn’t look all that nice when people lay it out in the sunshine. To use a management aphorism that Tillis might appreciate, if you think the news output stinks, consider the input with which we were working. 

This won’t be the first time a newspaper has lost a subscriber over reporters calling 'em like we see 'em.