In the last two weeks I've heard the floor of the Wyoming House of Representatives referred to as almost “sacred,” and “hallowed ground.”
That's from former members of the House commenting on the “CheckGate” flap, that dominated much of the early coverage of the current 20-day budget session.
(“Hallowed grounds?” I can hear my crustier conservative friends hoot in disbelief. “More like the belly of the beast.”)
The House floor is so hallowed and sacred, in fact, that these days, reporters covering the Legislature have to do so from up in the balcony above the House floor.
The powers that be banned reporters (myself included) from the floor over 40 years ago. Ever since, journalists have needed an invitation from a legislator to venture onto the floor, and only when the House is not in session.
Members made the argument that their desks were their offices, and they didn't want reporters having free run of the place.
That same year they threw us out of the doughnut and coffee room just off the House floor. We paid about $30 at the beginning of the session for our share of the grub. But, maybe because of eavesdropping, or a Cheyenne radio reporter who drank too much coffee – we got 86d from the break room. (To their credit, we got refunds for the unused portion of our $30.)
Hard to believe, but back in friendlier days there were tables at the front of the House and Senate specifically for the press. We could sit up there – just a few feet from where the House Clerk recorded voice votes – and follow action on the floor.
That was back when the Casper Star-Tribune put a lot of emphasis on the Legislature, running multiple full pages of coverage every day of the session. And they would send folks from Casper down to Cheyenne to help Capitol Bureau Chief Joan Barron cover the action. For four years, I was one of those guys, and it was fun, getting to be a reporter again.
To get to the press table at the front of the House floor, you had to get by the House Doorman. If you didn't have a coat and tie, you probably weren't getting in. And if you dared wear bluejeans with your Goodwill corduroy sports coat and fish tie (popular back then), you'd get the stink-eye from the doorman.
The bosses in Casper were great about technology. We were among the first reporters to get Radio Shack TRS-80 laptop computers, so we could write our stories while sitting at the press tables on the House and Senate floors. They were so new at the time that lawmakers would come up to see these new gadgets we were using. Today, every lawmaker has at least one computer,
Legislators got kind of loopy after 40 days in Cheyenne for regular sessions, and the final day tended to drag on into the wee hours. One year I was sitting at the press table and a senator from Natrona County beaned me with a piece of Jolly Rancher candy, thrown from across the Senate floor.
And then there was the prostitution joke. Some possibly lubricated senator would yell, “What about the prostitution bill?” and the Senate president would respond, “Pay it!”
Funny stuff. Knee-slappers.
I don't think there's as much mirth these days as back when many of our distinguished lawmakers would get jiggy out at the Hitching Post bar in the evenings.
Today there are no press tables on the House and Senate floors, as reporters do their work up in the balcony, laptops on laps, craning their heads to see what lawmaker is pontificating down below. They're cheek by jowl up there, with lobbyists, students on field trips to learn how a bill becomes a law, and ordinary taxpayers, there to see the legislative sausage getting made.
Times have definitely changed from when you could ask questions of lawmakers at their desks, or over a cup of coffee and a bear claw in the break room, before we ink-stained wretches were relegated to the cheap seats, up in the rafters.
I don't know if the House floor was that “sacred” or “hallowed” back then.
But, I think it was a lot more fun.
Dave Simpson can be contacted at DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
