Blue Collar Muse

There’s an old saying, “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves!” TN State Representative Donna Rowland (R - District 34, Murfreesboro) has an interesting report on her efforts to do precisely that.

A week ago, Murfreesboro blogger Matthew Hurtt noted an anomaly on Representative Rowland’s voting record. Of the 209 votes she cast recorded at Tennessee Votes,

* Representative Rowland voted ‘Aye’ on 34 of 209 votes cast.
* Representative Rowland voted ‘Nay’ on 2 of 209 votes cast.
* Representative Rowland voted ‘PNV’ on 173 of 209 votes cast.

“PNV” stands for “Present, Not Voting”. My first thought was of Hillary Clinton’s charges that Barack Obama often voted “Present” rather than cast definitive votes. Matt Hurtt quite properly called for folks to look into this. Of what use is a legislator who doesn’t take her responsibilities seriously enough to represent her constituents by voting on issues that concern them?

As it turns out, Representative Rowland is looking out for all Tennessee Taxpayers with her votes, not just those of the 34th District. As it turns out, the votes which Roland chose not to participate in have very little to do with the People’s business. Yesterday she released a statement explaining her actions.

Representative Donna Rowland (R-Murfreesboro) announced today that the State House of Representatives has spent over $300,000 on congratulatory and memorializing resolutions so far this year. Since the beginning of session this year, Rowland has chosen to cast a “present not voting” vote on most of the resolutions to show her disagreement with the volume of resolutions passing through the House of Representatives.

“As a steward of taxpayer money, it is important for us to recognize the tremendous amount of money we are spending on these resolutions,” said Rep. Rowland. “While I understand that sometimes we have outstanding individuals in our districts who deserve to be recognized, this has gotten out of control. These little things add up,” she added.

For the record, these votes are mere resolutions, not actual legislation. They are congratulatory in nature, unrelated to the governance of the state of Tennessee. While not quite as trivial as the announcements on the scoreboard at Nashville Sounds’ Greer Stadium wishing Billy Smith a Happy 7th Birthday and thanking the United Methodists for attending the game, they have about as much to do with running Tennessee as those platitudes. As such, Rowland is absolutely correct and to be commended for choosing not to participate in them.

I’m not against recognizing and praising the accomplishments of my friends and acquaintances. But I don’t expect you to fund that. Nor do I expect you to give up time you might otherwise direct to your own affairs to do so. Perhaps spending my own money and my own time to personally call or send a congratulatory note would be even more meaningful.

Let’s be clear, this is not just a couple of instances here and there. According to Rowland, the Legislature has spent $300,000 in taxpayer money, over 20% of their actual floor time in the Legislature and, in Rowland’s case, about 80% of the votes she was asked to cast related to anything but the work she was sent to Nashville to do. Words fail.

Do me a favor, will you? Take a moment and write Representative Rowland a “Thank You!”. Send her your own version of a congratulatory honorific. Tell her thanks for watching out for all of our hard earned dollars. And after the General Assembly’s session is over (it’s illegal to do so while the GA is in session), send her a few of your own dollars as a campaign contribution. If she does such a good job of watching out for yours now, she’ll put them to good use then.

Blue

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 7:33 am and is filed under Breaking News, Common Sense, Greater Transparency, Individual Responsibility, Leadership, Nashville Nuggets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.