Hot off the press, a legislator sent this over to me today, noting that these are the notes/handouts for State Representative Steve Haugaard’s plan on how to spent COVID19 cash from the federal government:
Steve Haugaard House Handout by Pat Powers on Scribd
One of the more concerning parts of the notes is under the criminal justice portion of his plan .. to give citations instead of jail time?
I suspect we’ll hear more about this at the upcoming executive board meeting.
*Update*
A House member calls me early this afternoon and claims that this all is being mischaracterized, and they claimed the document was actually an outline of “questions” that legislators should be asking about spending, as discussed as part of a conference call. So I went back to look at the e-mail that was forwarded to me…
Clearly this went to the House of Representatives as a whole. And I would concede, this being a discussion outline is entirely possible. But as a correspondent noted to me, if this was part of brainstorming, “such brainstorming should get public input.”
If the entire House of Representatives is getting together on a conference call to discuss a legislative response, even on an interim basis, was this call pre-announced and broadcast to the public?
Just sayin’
*Another update*
Rep Haugaard also reached out to express it’s just an outline, noting
The outline you posted was only a collection of topics to consider for discussion. It definitely is not my “spending plan”.
The comment about “citations instead of incarceration” was simply acknowledging that that is what is being done right now to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in the jails. That doesn’t mean that’s the best way to handle crime, but the point was to identify what is being done and how that affects jail costs, food service, criminal cases of failure to appear, and a variety of other issues.
This is only a working document intended to elicit thoughts, concerns, ideas about what works or doesn’t work. “
Okay..
This is all beard and no body. Not a bad outline but what is the actual plan? It takes two minutes to craft an outline of affected industries and entities but without some substance this is useless. Maybe Steve is waiting for the Senate to provide direction and leadership like usual.
Agree with 10:41. Anyone could have made this outline. It becomes nothing more than his trying to get attention.
I thought justice was getting punished for doing wrong as far as crime goes. Apparently a lot of idiot-run cities (Seattle, New York, Portland) believe justice is protecting certain classes of people from suffering punishment for their illegal behavior.
Lawn care?
Unfortunate this was provided without context. This isn’t a plan. Perhaps better to think of it as a precursor to a plan. As Haugaard indicated during yesterday’s call to House Members, all this is meant to be is a “list of ideas” meant to stimulate Members to come up with additional ideas that might ultimately lead to development of a plan. FWIW.
Is this call going to be posted to the LRC website? If the House is teleconferencing as a whole without notice, I have to admit, I don’t particularly care for it.