Robert’s Rules, Mason’s Rules, and Moderator Gary Matteson’s own rules, I won’t get into the weeds or nuts and bolts of operations. Let’s just say that there’s a common structural design to maintain order. Maintaining order is vital to avoiding CHAOS, something that a lone wolf dissenting alderman was recently accused of being an agent of in Concord. More on her in a moment. The chair of any body, whether it’s a committee, board or chamber of the legislature, “recognizes” the member requesting mic time. It usually goes without saying that there’s an unspoken code of conduct.
The chair is supposed to call on (recognize) members in the order that their hands were raised, and equal treatment is supposed to be given, no matter how un/popular the member may be to you, me, the chair, or the rest of the body. Once preferential treatment or alienation is given, the sanctity of the system is corrupted. What comes around can later go around, though I will point out that practitioners of tyranny in blue cities are probably counting on their communities being lost at sea enough to make winning the lottery a better possibility than things coming around later going around.
When the future is discussed in our Senate chamber, we often hear members point out that today’s 24 members will not be the same 24 members in the future when making policy decisions. When I say “policy decisions,” that includes rules of the body and equal enforcement. That means Watters can spew political and philosophical gibberish for 15 minutes, uninterrupted, just as much as Senator Murphy can “school” the enemy camp on spending and tax policy. Equal treatment.
There are “relief valves” in place when a member crosses the line. Examples of those can also be found in the Senate. Daryl Abbas has point-of-ordered Altschiller several times during her signature gun-hating screeds. Victoria Sullivan has done the same to Watters, and Senator Gray has utilized that tool on both motormouths. However, every member has the opportunity to be recognized if they request it. One might even talk to Tammy, the Senate clerk, if interested in learning more, because she’s been on the job for over 30 years and keeps track of the order in which Queen Sharon recognizes senators. One could ask Tammy if there has ever been a complaint, and I surmise that the answer is NO. Let’s talk about the “other side of the wall.”
Our House is physically structured differently in many ways, but members walk up to the Speaker’s giant fortress for mic time, and procedures may vary, depending on the nature of the comment, question, or motion. “The House will be in order,” is something the Speaker sternly shouts into his mic multiple times per session. Part of being in order is equal treatment, but our Speaker isn’t as good at practicing that as his own senator and counterpart, Queen Sharon.
One glaring example occurred on 2/17/22, after the People’s Business was complete and reps were in unanimous consent and personal privilege mode. Tony Labranche, a former Dem rep from Amherst, had just completed his “exit statement” (from Team Blue), and you can hear multiple reps shouting “Mr. Speaker” to request that Labranche’s remarks be put in the House Journal. An ethical speaker with a moral compass is supposed to say “without objection,” but when Speaker Packard objects, all rules and traditions be damned.
On 2/17/22, the Speaker was captured on video being pathologically in a hurry to gavel the body into recess, much to the disapproval of several members, and the fact that he asked, “Are you ready for the question?” and several members said no. Let’s move on from the House to City Hall.
I won’t take readers into a long detour about the trouble with Mrs. Sexton and the multiple capacities in which she operates, but let’s take a look at what happens when one of her equals stands up as a lone wolf. Remember that “agent of chaos” I mentioned earlier? Her name is Stacey Brown and the mayor refused her input as seen in the video. It appears that there is no Concord version of Alderman Wilshire as the mayor controls the gavel. His disdain for Stacey Brown is akin to Donchess’s disdain for the former Ward 6 alderman, Elizabeth Lu, who retired in 2021 after serial mistreatment by Donchess and his ilk for asking questions. Let’s go back to Alderman Wilshire for a moment.
In Nashua, the mayor has his own desk outside what’s known as “the horse shoe,” unlike Manchester, where the mayor is in the middle and runs the show. Alderman Wilshire and her gavel are seated up high on her throne and surrounded by a fortress with seating for the city clerk and legislative affairs manager. It’s architecturally akin to a judge’s or Queen Sharon’s or the Speaker’s workstations. Wilshire controls both what aldermen get recognized when the body is in session and what members of the public get called up to the mic and in what order.
Sometimes there are 2 public comment opportunities: one for current agenda items and one for everything else. Don’t you dare make the wrong comment during the wrong one lest you be harshly rebuked! I will add that Wilshire, Attorney Bolton, and several aldermen have no issue with interrupting the 3 minutes of mic time allotted to members of the public if they disapprove of what’s being said. Alderman Kelly, a committee chair, ended Laurie Ortolano’s 3 minutes of public comment time several seconds early while the topic at hand was interestingly about free speech!
Then there’s the omitting of public comment altogether, something in Wilshire’s arsenal that she used in November 2021. Mask Madness 2.0 was on the agenda, and squadrons of people naturally wanted to go on record with their objections. The witch wasn’t having any of it, and I got booted off the Zoom call that night just a few seconds after holding up a message in front of the camera that she disliked. For the record, it said “F the BoA” in those exact characters.
I get the feeling that the Live Free or Die state has a lot more tyrants with gavels than one might think. We need to get rid of all these Judge Constance Harm wannabes.
