Almanac: At the Capitol

It was education day in the House, with both early childhood and K-12 bills under consideration.

View the Capitol Update for April 23, 2009.

Maybe the K-12 education debate will go well today on the House floor.  That's the Republican lead Rep. Pat Garofalo next to Education Chair Mindy Greiling, and yes Greiling has a Garofalo t-shirt on.  He gave her the t-shirt during their live debate on Almanac: At the Capitol to soften her up to take some of his amendments today.  The fun pair had a great debate and really seem to like each other, despite different viewpoints on education.  Greiling put on the shirt leaving the set last night.  Her bill holds education funding flat or as Greiling prefers "steady" but Garofalo says it's not a priority and doesn't have an increase or reform like the governor.  In her briefing this morning, Greiling said "we're in financial storms and our bill holds the ship steady."

It seems it's the week of first-time news conferences.  First premise: make sure your idea is new or different.  Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) held his first news conference today.  Garofalo is proposing giving early high school graduates scholarships that also saves the state budget money because they won't be in school anymore.  He said some Democrats privately like the idea, but Education Chair Mindy Greiling said "We already have Post Secondary Enrollment Options and College in Schools--which I strongly support...  This doesn't sound much different."

Afterwards he asked me how he did since it was his first time.  I had to tell him the highest praise is the fact a DFL staffer in the back of the room said his members could learn something from this about doing press conferences.  Garofalo was stunned and open to more feedback, that's another good sign, being willing to take press feedback.

What Garofalo did well was keep his opening statement brief, less than 5 minutes and told us more details are in the press materials.  You don't need to read your press release.  That allowed for 10 solid minutes of questions.  There half-hour long news conferences where we get in fewer questions than we did today in a 13 minute press conference.  The other helpful aspect of this news conference was while there were many lawmakers present, not every one of them felt the need to talk (which is rare).  It's great to have supporters in attendance, but not all 10 of them need to speak.  If the press wants to hear from someone, they'll ask.  

So after being a bit tough on another lawmaker's first press conference this week because the idea was quickly shot down, this was one done right.  And speaking of that other news conference, Sen. Dibble gave his "sincere apology" for his remarks dismissing Sen. Gimse's idea of moving mass transit funding to school busing.  Dibble says he will now schedule a hearing for the bill.