John Schroers, legislative coordinator for the Minnesota Outdoor Heritage Alliance, a consortium of more than 30 different hunting, fishing and outdoors groups, thinks Lessard's argument has some merit. We'll be watching this very closely. Unicameral proponents think Lessard's outdoors angle is just a little, well, fishy. It's exactly opposite. Special interests are better served in an inherently complicated, esoteric system.
Special interests get their way in the arcane nuances of the conference committee.
Lessard's position came as a surprise to Chuck Slocum, general manager for the Single House group. He thought the senator might be sympathetic with the cause, especially since so many hunters, anglers and outdoors types generally throw their support to Gov. Jesse Ventura, who is leading the charge for a unicameral system. My sense is that Sen. Lessard may be trying to protect himself against a problem that doesn't exist. They just believe that they would have a better, cleaner shot at their kinds of outdoors sports issues in a single house than not. They introduce bills, they get them passed through committee.