PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

The question in the headline is on the minds of those following the 2016 short legislative session as lawmakers are gathered at the Capitol for a month.

There are at least two answers to the question, plus variations on the theme.

To Democrats, who are in charge in the Governor’s Office and in both the House and Senate, the answer seems to be that the short session is a time to consider big issues – an increase in the minimum wage, freedom to let voters decide on a major, public-employee-union backed corporate tax increase, and new environmental regulations.

They would call these “emergencies.”

To Republicans, in the minority everywhere, the short session should be a time to consider legislative fixes – read, housekeeping measures – and variations in the state government budget that have emerged since legislators were last at the Capitol. In other words, short session-small issues, which Republicans contend is what voters were led to believe would happen as they passed a constitutional change allowing every-year legislative sessions.

They would call these “emergencies” – small fixes that cannot wait.

At the start of the short session on February 1, Republicans surprised everyone by demanding that all individual pieces of legislation be read on the floors of both houses in their entirety, word-for-word, not just by title. They said that was a way to stall major issues, which should wait for the long session in 2017.

House and Senate administrators responded by looking for a computer program that would read all bills aloud faster than any human could.

If you were to talk with Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, the main architect of the annual session idea, and Senator Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, the Senate Republican Leader, you would hear two markedly different descriptions of annual sessions.

To Courtney, annual sessions are a way to put the Legislative Branch on more equal fitting with the Executive Branch and that often means considering major issues.

To Ferrioli, Democrats are using annual sessions to try to achieve major changes, such as the minimum wage increase that he says will harm rural Oregon.   Such issues should wait for a longer time in Salem.

Here is the way he put it in a news release issued on February 4:

“Yesterday’s assertion by Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist that the Oregon Constitution allows counties to not comply with a proposed minimum wage mandate shocked policymakers convinced Oregon needs a higher minimum wage. This major hitch in the minimum wage plan left supporters stunned and scrambling to determine if their plan is enforceable, and if not, how they can compensate local governments for the unfunded mandate.

“This sudden hiccup in the majority party’s plans is a symptom of a pervasive disease in the Oregon legislature: Democrat leaders have ambitious goals to pass major new policies in just 35 short days. 35 days is not enough time to consider sweeping changes to the way Oregonians live and do business, from a $5 billion gross receipts tax to a cap and trade model for energy policy.”

That so-called “hiccup” – either a two-thirds vote or an allocation of state resources to help local government respond to a minimum wage increase – struck many observers are more than a hiccup. The fact is that it stood a very chance of derailing the increase, which Governor Kate Brown hoped to usher through the session, in part to avoid a battle at the polls next November.

Taxes in general also are on the minds of those in Salem. A huge tax increase on business, proposed by public-employee unions, will make for a major fight at the polls next fall, one that will feature millions of dollars in advertising on both sides. It will be a bruising battle, with some businesses saying they will pull up stakes in Oregon if the increase passes.

Union leaders and others say the threat is overstated.

Early in the short session, Senator Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, made a courageous proposal for a middle ground solution, one that gained weight because of his position as the chair of the Senate Revenue Committee. But, at first blush, the Hass proposal did not appear to have any chance to derail unions from their appointed rounds leading up to next November.

In the spirit of full disclosure, as the intro says to this blog, I served as a private sector lobbyist for about 25 years and, thus, I have a number of biases built up over those years.

One is the annual sessions is a mistake. To use a lobby term, it is “the first step down a slippery slope” toward a professional legislature that would function much like – perish the thought – the U.S. Congress.

A better alternative would have been to develop a variety of legislative proposals to hold state agencies accountable for performance and results, and then use those proposals in the every-other-year legislative session to assert a legislative prerogative to make government work better.