RALEIGH -- After two months of the 2011 legislative session, the trend is pretty clear. Republicans who won the 2010 legislative elections and control the General Assembly for the first time since the 19th century are not just having their way on plans to cut the 2011-12 budget and trim state government. They're also making up for lost time on dozens of issues that have been nagging at them for years, especially some hot-button issues. Key architects such as Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Thom Tillis have the legislature moving fast.
It makes you wonder whether Democrats would have been wiser in previous years to work closely with Republicans on some key bills, such as raising the cap on charter schools, or requiring voters to show ID cards at polls, to avoid some of the legislation now moving through.
Take charter schools. When the schools were first authorized by the legislature, Democrats insisted on a cap of 100. It sounded reasonable. After all, this was an experiment. The state would have its hands full just processing applications for 100 schools and seeing how they fared. The cap could be raised anytime.
It didn't happen that way. The cap stayed the same as some charter schools excelled, some did about as well as the average public school and some failed miserably. And with the cap set but a long line of students and parents who wanted more, frustration built.
Proposals to raise the cap each year were advanced, but those who thought charters threatened traditional public schools managed to block bills that would allow a half dozen or more new charter schools to get under way each year. The Observer's editorial department came to the view in 2006 that it would be better to raise the number modestly but regularly rather than allow pent-up demand to fester and deprive a growing number of students of the charter opportunity.
So when Wake Republican Sen. Richard Stevens sponsored his charter school bill this year to do away with the cap entirely and to offer a number of other changes, Democrats were aghast. I had concerns about parts of the bill, particularly on governance, but I also thought what Democrats were getting was nothing more than a natural reaction to years of Republican inability to get basic concessions on the number of schools. House and Senate amendments have made the charter school bill better - capping annual growth at 50, among other things - but those who opposed lifting the cap for so long now are having other changes crammed down their throats.
A similar situation arises with a House bill sponsored by Republican Reps. Ric Killian, Tim Moore and David Lewis to require voters to show photo ID cards when they arrive at the polls. Democrats object to the bill because, they believe, it's an official-sounding ruse to block elderly and low-income voters, who may not have driver's licenses or other photo ID cards and who tend to vote Democratic, from voting. Republican backers say they only want to reduce the possibility of voter fraud.
Things might have been different if Democrats in previous sessions had realized that a great many residents, including a lot of Democrats, shared Republican worries about who's voting and gone along with earlier legislation to require either a photo ID or some other form of identification.
Bills in previous sessions would have permitted voting for those who could produce identification alluded to in the federal Help Americans Vote Act - such as copies of utility bills with their names and correct addresses, or correspondence from government agencies addressed to them at the locale for which they were registered. Had that legislation passed, the current ardor in the Republican caucus for photo IDs might be much less.
Of course, bipartisan cooperation carries you only so far. It would be unrealistic to argue that more cooperation with Republicans when Democrats were in the majority would have staved off the Republican legislative steamrollering we're seeing now.
But Republicans might be more inclined to go along with Democrats on more amendments if they were not remembering so vividly so many instances when Democrats were gleefully giving Republicans their medicine - and giving it good and hard, as H.L. Mencken might have said.
There's a growing theory among Democrats that Republicans will ride so roughshod over Democrats this session that an enraged public will rise up at the polls next year and trim the GOP sails. Maybe, especially if too many teachers are laid off. But Republicans believe voters clearly registered their desire for change last fall, and they're doing their best to deliver it - good and hard.
Jack Betts is a Charlotte Observer associate editor based in Raleigh.
