Doug Rooks’ recent column encouraging the Legislature to come back into session after election day was good advice (“‘Lame duck’ legislators should return after Election Day,” Sept. 10). But I doubt the legislative leadership will do it.

Politics, even in Maine, has turned so nasty and divisive that the ability and willingness to work together has disappeared. This is both sad and infuriating.

For one thing, there are 162 bills supported by legislative committees that await action by the House and Senate. If they don’t act on those bills, they’re dead, and the next session will have to start all over on them. There are also issues involving the pandemic, including confusion over tax policies for people who are living here but are residents in other states, and Mainers temporarily working in other states.

I think Gov. Janet Mills has done a great job of keeping us safe, but it would be nice for the Legislature to be working with her. Unfortunately, Republican legislators want to repeal the governor’s authority to deal with the pandemic. I’m afraid, if they succeeded, we’d suffer the same massive problems other states are dealing with.

Things were very different between 1990 and 2010, when I was a lobbyist at the State House. Republicans and Democrats got to know each other and became friends, making it a whole lot easier to work together. This doesn’t mean they always agreed, but when you’re friends, you can work things out.

Many of us enjoyed lunch at the State House cafeteria, sitting together and enjoying each other’s company. I often jumped from table to table to speak with legislators and other lobbyists. Many lingered long after eating to talk with each other. We got a lot done in the cafeteria! And quite often a bunch of us, after the day’s session, would go out for drinks and dinner. Today, as soon as the session ends, legislators leave, spending no time with each other.

I would sometimes submit 25 or 30 bills, and always had good luck in getting them enacted. Of course, many of the bills were considered by the Fish and Wildlife Committee, where I had a good relationship with each member.

One thing which made things more difficult was term limits. Why do we think experience is a bad thing? After term limits took effect, the Fish and Wildlife Committee, when working on a bill, would sometimes ask me to tell them about the history of an issue, because none of them knew it.

I was always happy to help, but it also distressed me that we had no experienced legislators with that valuable knowledge. Today I’m sure lobbyists are even more powerful because they have that knowledge while legislators do not.

After a lifetime as a Republican, I switched parties to vote for my friends Janet Mills and Jared Golden in the Democratic primary. And after the primary, I didn’t return to the Republican Party because today our Republican president has repealed more than 100 environmental protections for everything from our rivers to our national parks. Shameful. When I was a Republican activist, we were the conservation leaders.

Throughout my life, I would never have imagined a time when I’d be helping Democratic candidates, but that’s where I am today. One Democrat I’m really enthused about is Deborah Emery, the House candidate in my district. My wife Linda knows Deb, who was a teacher, principal and superintendent.

Deb visited with me a while ago, to get my advice, and I was very impressed by her. She’ll be like the legislators I worked with, making friends in both parties. Campaigning in this pandemic is tough. The most important thing for candidates in the past was going door to door throughout their districts, but today, people would not be pleased to see you at their door.

Let’s hope we elect legislators in November who will return the Legislature to the good old days when it was fun to hang out in Augusta.

It’s time to return to Augusta, not Disgusta.

George Smith can be reached at 34 Blake Hill Road, Mount Vernon 04352, or georgesmithmaine@gmail.com. Read more of Smith’s writings at www.georgesmithmaine.com.

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