Baldacci spokesman Lee Umphrey’s insulting comment suggesting that the State House remains “empty” even when the Legislature is “in the building” (BDN, June 23) demonstrates the extent to which petty condescension and name-calling have come to occupy the place that we all hoped genuine leadership someday would within the besieged administration. It also appears to send a message about the administration’s new attitude toward the Legislature, an attitude that one can hardly suggest is constructive given the great challenges before us and the public’s obvious lack of faith in our ability to deal with those challenges.

One has to wonder what the administration could possibly have hoped to achieve with Umphrey’s nasty little comment, but I find myself more interested in the question of why this apparent contempt for the legislature, Democrats included, appears to have arisen now. Could it be that the governor is finding his fellow Democrats in the legislature, the same ones who sent him a letter in the waning hours of the session addressed “To Whom it May Concern” are continuing to be less than cooperative?

Could it be that for their part, Democrats in the Legislature, looking at re-election this fall, are continuing to distance themselves from the failure of their party’s leadership to enact some type of tax reform plan? The surprising announcement of a contested speaker’s race would seem to indicate that they are.

Or could it be that the initial partisan finger pointing at the end of the legislative session has given way to a more general consensus in the Legislature that the primary failure in all of this was the governor’s?

It is instructive to recall that at the end of the disastrous last session, the Democrats fell all over themselves to assign blame for the lack of substantive tax reform to the minority Republicans. Republicans were accused of being obstructionist, of not wanting to be part of the discussion, of somehow being an insurmountable obstacle to tax reform.

Elementary civics, of course, proves that nothing could be farther from the truth. The Democrats control both houses of the Legislature and the governor’s mansion, and are thus able to pass pretty much any legislation that they wish.

The minority Republicans, I can attest from personal experience, are powerless to stop them. It was always within the ability of the Democrats, therefore, to enact a tax reform measure whether we Republicans liked it or not.

But they didn’t. Instead, they fought each other to standstill on which tax to raise as part of their tax “relief” package, ultimately failing to come to any consensus among themselves and passing nothing. As a consequence of this failure, an outraged public has passed one ill-considered tax reform plan and appears poised to pass yet another one this fall that is far worse.

So if Republicans are not to blame for this failure, who is? And how does this explain Umphrey’s poorly disguised disdain for the Legislature?

Insiders will tell you that Democrats complained privately for most of the session that the governor exhibited little leadership on the issue of tax reform. A few of those concerns were aired publicly and with great passion during the floor debates on tax reform, but most were kept close to the vest.

Now, all of a sudden, comes Democratic rising star Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, telling the BDN last week that the governor’s lack of an “active role” in the tax reform debate “was a big problem.” Now, all of a sudden, the Democrat House Majority Leader is facing a leadership challenge from within his own party, supported in part by Democrats who want someone to be “more assertive” with the governor.

At a conference with a handful of Democrat legislators last weekend I heard plenty of complaints that the failure of the governor’s half-hearted opposition to recently-passed Question 1 and his reluctance to call the legislature in for a special session have doomed the state to the passage of the heinous Palesky ballot issue.

As a member of the legislature’s coastal caucus, and as someone who worked extensively on the tax reform issue, it was my experience as well that the governor’s office had little or no presence in the debate at all. The bipartisan work of our caucus drew interest and support from the legislative leadership, the Maine Municipal Association, the Maine Education Association, the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, the Service Center Coalition, the Maine Center for Economic Policy and countless other groups committed to a tax reform effort. No one from the governor’s office even came to a meeting of ours, much less offered to work with us, even after Democrat members of the caucus went personally to the governor and asked for his support.

Now we have the governor claiming yet again that he wants the legislative leadership to work together, but the House Republican Office staff tells me that the governor hasn’t contacted them since the end of the session. The same BDN article that contained the offending quote also contained reports from Republican leaders that they have not been invited to any kind of substantive discussion whatsoever.

What was spokesman Umphrey’s response to this? It was to chastise them for seemingly wanting “an engraved invitation.” And this is supposed to constitute “working cooperatively”? This is what the governor means by “reaching out?” Is the limit of leadership from the governor’s office to simply call for progress and then not work for it?

Big changes will come to Augusta this fall with a new Legislature and new leadership. We can hope that one other thing that will change will be the governor’s approach toward working with the House and Senate. We can hope that perhaps he will try a little more persuasion and a little less derision, and he will ensure that his staff does as well.

There is too much at stake to leave the State House “empty” of true leadership.

Rep. Stephen Bowen represents Camden and Rockport in the Maine House of Representatives.