Isn't that special?

HELENA -- It's appears more and more likely that Montana will face a special legislative session, probably in December but possibly in January. Heaven help the state if it must endure two special sessions in as many months.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer will decide after today's Quality Schools Interim Committee's meeting whether to summon legislators to Helena later this month to take up school funding. He may add the state's ailing pension funds to the agenda.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders want legislators to call themselves into special session Jan. 10 to consider school funding, property tax relief and water adjudication. If 76 of the 150 legislators agree, a session will occur.

Since empowered to call themselves into special session in the 1972 Montana Constitution, lawmakers have done so only once: to extend by 11 days the 1973 session so they could complete their work. Despite numerous attempts, legislators have not called themselves into special session since then and they have never done so between sessions.

Presumably, Republicans would snuff out their effort if Schweitzer calls a session, but who knows?

Special sessions are weird animals.

Most governors hate special sessions. They share the Capitol with legislators for four out of every 24 months, and then lawmakers adjourn and go home. Governors have the Montana political stage to themselves the other 20 months, and they rather like that.

Legislators don't like getting yanked away from their families, jobs and lives for special sessions. But let's face it, once they get here, they rather enjoy the respect they command in the Capitol. They love being called "Senator Jones" or "Representative Smith," debating big state issues and having their opinions sought after by reporters. Their lobbyist friends are there wine and dine them at Helena's hot spots.

As for Montana citizens, well, hold onto your pocketbooks. Clutch your copy of the constitution. Keep track of how your lawmakers vote. Hold their feet to the fire on the issues you care about.

If you think the regular, 90-days legislative session is a rush job, wait until you've seen a special session.

Rules are suspended. Advance notification for citizens usually goes by the wayside. Shortcuts are legally authorized. Good-government folks are appalled. This is the fast-food version of law-making, with the resulting heartburn -- and sometimes heartache -- later.

Special sessions are gnarly, ugly and chaotic, usually with little party discipline. Governors and party leaders often have a hard time orchestrating what happens.

When the former Butte-Anaconda Democratic legislators were in their heyday, before term limits cleared them out, they would artfully play both sides against the middle, wheeling and dealing, to get what they wanted. But that's all canola oil over the dam now.

The old adage about no person's life, liberty or pursuit of happiness being safe when the Legislature is in session applies tenfold during special sessions.

The chief reason is the 1972 Montana Constitution empowered lawmakers to expand a special session by getting the signatures of 76 of the 150 legislators. There is great peer pressure during a session to sign each others' petitions. Legislators who aren't on the key committees have plenty of idle time during special sessions. Idle hands, as we know, are the devil's playthings. Lobbyists often work hand-in-glove with legislators to revive some dead bill from the past.

So a one-issue session on, say, school funding, can quickly swell to 10 issues, with most unworthy of a special session.

It was Democratic Gov. Ted Schwinden in the 1980s who started the now-popular trend of Montana governors scheduling special sessions close to holidays. The theory: make the legislators come in and do their job quickly so they'll be home for Christmas.

That theory works fine if you have a consensus solution among the parties beforehand. Whether that will happen on the thorny school-funding issue remains to be seen.

At other times, backing legislators up against a holiday has failed miserably.

Schwinden summoned the legislators in March 1986 to address tort reform, seeking to cap liability awards in civil lawsuits, a divisive issue that takes two-thirds majority votes. There was no agreement going, nor after six days of bitter debate, none going out. This calamity reeled to a close on Easter morning. The House left town at 3:48 a.m. and the Senate fled five minutes later, with nothing accomplished.

This session is still recalled as "The Easter Massacre" by those who were there.

Shortly afterward, I banged out my thoughts on special sessions and hung them in the Capitol press room, which is now a women's restroom. Some might find these views still applicable:

-- There is nothing special about special sessions.

-- Everybody loses in a special session.

-- One special session begets another.

Charles Johnson is chief of the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. He can be reached at (800) 525-4920 or (406) 443-4920. His e-mail address is chuck.johnson@lee.net.