Keeping Regular Hours
Most communities have nuisance ordinances…for example, an outdoor concert in a town cannot extend past a certain time for fear of being a public nuisance. There’s also the sense that after a certain time of night—midnight, for example—it’s best for things to settle down and for everyone to go home.
I’d like to suggest that cities where law-making bodies meet enact similar ordinances, requiring those legislatures and Congress to adjourn before the clock strikes midnight on any given day.
We could say it’s for the safety of the lawmakers and their staff members, who shouldn’t be out like that at all hours of the night.
But it’s really for our safety, to protect us against bad decisions.
I’m not saying that anything done last weekend in Washington or Des Moines was bad necessarily. But the U.S. Senate stayed past midnight to pass a FISA renewal, literally after the deadline…and both the Iowa Senate and House finished their work after the bars closed…the House was only an hour away from seeing the sun rise, the second straight near-overnighter they pulled.
From a cognitive standpoint, we don’t do our best work and don’t make the best decisions when we’re tired. We know that…so why is it OK for a bunch of lawmakers to make decisions on literally billions of dollars long after their respective bedtimes?
And from a transparency standpoint, there’s no way for ordinary citizens to know what’s going on until well after it’s happened and those responsible have hung up the “closed” sign for the year. Witness extending the moratorium on new casinos in Iowa…it apparently all of a sudden bubbled up and passed the Senate as Friday night turned into Saturday morning, but the House declined to discuss it as even the most hardy bar folks were finishing breakfast in an all-night diner somewhere.
I’m not here to say it was a good or bad idea…but how would we know either way? I’m the first to admit that I don’t get enough sleep, but even I keep more regular hours than that. And it’s no excuse to say that it’s only the last couple of days of the session, or it’s always been done that way.
The local government in Washington is a lost cause on so many fronts, but if the City of Des Moines wanted to perform an important public service…it would pass an ordinance shutting down the state capitol at midnight when the legislature is in session. If lawmakers want to scurry off and do business—or whatever—in local bars for two hours after that, fine…but their business needs to be done in the light of day.
