When Statehouse Politics Embarrass the Nation - The New York Times - New York Times
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Evan Vucci/Associated Press
Before his unsuccessful run for president, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin cut his teeth as a tough-on-crime Republican lawmaker who demanded that prison inmates serve their full terms. Mr. Walker is taking this passion to a new low in a budget plan to cut the state’s parole agency from eight employees to just one.
At least 2,000 inmates have served enough of their sentences to be eligible for parole, subject to a hearing and recommendations from the parole commission’s staff of civil servants. State officials insist that a single gubernatorial appointee can handle the parole process as efficiently as eight people, with assistance from other agencies.
But reducing the likelihood that a prisoner will be considered for parole, rather than efficiency, is probably the real rationale for a governor who gloats that he also does not issue pardons.
Such is the mood that permeates more than a few statehouses as Republican victors settle in for a fresh season’s budget proposals and legislation inspired by partisan regressiveness more than civic good.
In Arizona, Republican state senators recently approved a crackdown on people who, in the senators’ fervid imaginations, are being paid to stir rioting in the waves of constitutionally protected protests directed at the agendas of Republicans and President Trump. There are already anti-rioting laws on the books. But the Arizona Senate’s full 17-member Republican majority approved use of the state’s racketeering conspiracy laws to give the police new power to arrest organizers of protests that become unruly, even if it’s an outsider who stirs a riotous situation.
“You have full-time, almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public disorder,” insisted State Senator John Kavanagh. “This stuff is all planned.” The proposal, which would also allow the police to seize a protest planner’s assets, was sent to the House for quick action.
Fortunately for the Constitution, Arizona’s Republican House leadership was soon bombarded with public complaints that the measure was a low-road, outrageous attempt to chill free speech. “The people need to know we are not about limiting people’s rights,” the House speaker, J. D. Mesnard, hurriedly announced, killing the bill in an attempt to spare his party further embarrassment.
Unfortunately, Arizona Republicans have not been alone in their feverish attempt to crimp free speech in the name of law and order. The practice has been growing in Republican legislatures in at least 16 states. Some of the measures have made it into law; most so far have not. But the meanspirited edge is sadly transparent and presents a further cause for public protest.
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