Adele Ferguson - Ferguson bids fond farewell to Speaker Bagnariol

SO BAGGIE is gone.

Pneumonia claimed former House Speaker John Angelo Bagnariol of Renton on Dec. 6 at the age of 77, these days way too young to die.

A reluctant letter writer, I received two missives from him during the 40 or so years I knew him. The first was when I wrote of complaints from readers that he and fellow Gamscam defendants Gordon Walgren and Pat Gallagher were getting special treatment in the prison they’d been sent to for two years on federal racketeering charges.

I’m not going to go into the history and details of Gamscam, it’s been done to death, but here’s the letter.

“Dear Adele. I don’t consider scrubbing and waxing floors, cleaning urinals, etc., every day being coddled. I am learning to be a good janitor so maybe I’ll open a cleaning service when I get out.” He was paid $6 a month, I learned from Walgren, who was getting $20 a month as clerk to the prison psychologist and Gallagher got $7 a month as a clerk in the maintenance shop.

The other letter long after Baggie got out of prison took issue with my writing that he and Gallagher had been proven guilty in court while Walgren had not. Not true, he said. He did not keep the $5,000 the feds gave him at one point as a bribe but passed it on to Gallagher as intended.

I ALWAYS LIKED Baggie. He was one of the most accessible and frank Speakers I’ve seen in that office and I date back through Leonard Sawyer, Tom Swayze, Don Eldridge, Bob Schaefer, “Big Daddy” Day and John L. O’Brien.

He once sent for me to ream me out for a news story I’d written when the second try for a state income tax fell apart and he had charged off the rostrum, grabbed the Democratic floor leader’s microphone and chewed out the Republicans. I judged his effort to be 30 percent bluster, 30 percent temper, 30 percent fatigue arid 10 percent personal problems. My fellow reporters persuaded me to up the temper part to 49 percent so if he wasn’t really mad as he claimed, he sure fooled them.

He said he considered my story to be the rottenest (actually, he used a slightly earthier word) version of any he’d read on his performance. He was not mad, he insisted, and he didn’t want people to think he couldn’t control his actions better than that.

He reamed me out a few times, like when he rapped the gavel so hard he broke the glass panel on the rostrum desk and I asked him about it. He always apologized either immediately after a blow up or not long after.

Once some members of the House Democratic caucus wanted to make what I had written a “caucus matter.” The result of that could lead to withdrawal of my press credentials and being kicked off the floor of the House during sessions.

ACTUALLY, I started it when I went to Bagnariol and complained about one of my House members, Rep. Rick Smith, being voted fairly frequently by his seat mate when he was absent. House members who like to roam or who have business they consider more important during floor sessions solve the problem by having their seatmate vote for them with the button at their desk. A lot of them were doing it.

I insisted that members either vote personally as required or explain their absences to their constituents. Smith, of course, denied the frequency of his absences. Speaker Bagnariol nipped the effort to chastise me in the bud. Unfortunately, he told his caucus, what I had written was true.

Happy landings, Baggie.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69. Hansville, Wa.., 98340.)