Category: Virginia

I previously pointed out that Delegate Chris Peace voted to not record subcommittee votes (and to not allow live television broadcasting of the House of Delegates session).

Delegate Peace in an email to a third party:

I appreciate your sending me your thoughts regarding recorded votes in subcommittees. It is unfortunate that this issue has been so misunderstood. Most people don’t know the facts.

No final action on bills can be taken in subcommittee — final action can only occur in full committee where all votes are recorded and available on-line. Subcommittees act as mark-up or working sessions to address problems which may be foreseeable, correct those problem if possible and put legislation in a proper posture giving it the best chance of passage. It provides an atmosphere to air concerns and institutes efficiencies for the session.

Although subcommittees do take action on legislation, their decisions – under Democrat control or Republican – have never been posted separately on the Internet. This is because the result of any actions can be ascertained quite easily by reviewing the bill summaries that are available on the Internet ( http://leg1.state.va.us ). A bill that was not fully prepared to be taken to the full committee or failed to win any significant support would be listed there as “Left in Subcommittee”.

Often in this process, a bill will receive little support and not enough to move forward. The full committee — irrespective of the subcommittee’s recommendation — can bring up any bill at any time. In addition, subcommittee meetings are open to the public and all are welcome to record any portion of the subcommittee proceeding, be it testimony, arguments, and/or votes.

The legislature typically goes through between 2000-3000 bills within a 45 or 60 day session. If you do the math, that’s a lot of output each day, so we must have a process in place that let’s us allocate time and divide the work in the most efficient manner.

I share your view — and agree — that citizens should know where their elected representatives stand on legislation before the General Assembly. I believe our current system does a good job of balancing the necessity of letting the sunshine in on the legislative process while having a procedure that promotes efficiency.

Again, thanks for your note. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to serve you better.

Delegate Chris Peace
97th House District
804-698-1097 (Richmond Office)
804-730-3737 (District Office)

I respectfully disagree for several reasons.

Here’s what former Delegate John Welch said in 2007:

The great thing about what we did last year in the House: we gave killing power to subcommittees. So now, as a — I’m a subcommittee chairman of two committees now. And we can actually kill a bill in subcommittee and it cannot come up in full committee. And it used to be able to get killed in subcommittee, and go in front of full committee, then it would get passed and moved on. So, the [inaudible] knew how to work that game.

So now, I have as few as five people on my subcommittee and as a subcommittee chair I can usually reel a few of them [inaudible].

So — um — they know it’s a different world out there and they have to come to us and they have strike deals. And one of them deals is that you treat me as a peer — not as a citizen. So that’s where we are.

Here’s what the Richmond Times-Dispatch said:

Republicans in the House of Delegates started off this year’s session with a profoundly dubious decision. Once again, they chose to let subcommittees kill bills with unrecorded voice votes.

Here’s what the Daily Press said:

Open government took a slap in the face when the Republican majority in the House of Delegates changed the rules in the 2006 legislative session. The change allows bills to die in subcommittee without a recorded vote.

Here’s what TriCities.com said:

In the latest open government clash in Richmond, Delegate Bob Marshall has emerged as an unlikely hero – the lone voice of reason among House Republicans.

Marshall, a fiery social conservative who hails from Prince William County, was the only member of his delegation to vote in favor of recording subcommittee votes last week. The measure did not pass.

The subcommittee system remains an unaccountable black hole, where House lawmakers send unpopular measures to die. No comparable bill-killing chamber exists in the state Senate.

Here’s what The Daily Progress said:

Call it the gulag of lawmaking.

Proposed bills go into the darkness and there they are killed, no spotlight, no fingerprints.

The General Assembly continues to cloak in secrecy some of its most basic decisions, those concerning the life or death of proposed laws. A bill to change this was defeated on a largely partisan vote during the very first hour the legislature was in session.

Here’s the background:

Two years ago, the GOP majority in the House of Delegates used its new power to change the legislative rules under which the House operated. Bills that went to subcommittee for evaluation could be killed there – with no recorded vote.

Previously, subcommittees had recommended the fate of legislation to their full committees.

Although the committees often accepted those recommendations with little or no discussion, at least there was a chance for further discussion. And there was a record of who voted for or against sending the bill forward to the House.

Constituents could find out not only what happened to a bill, but who made it happen. The old system provided openness and accountability.

[…]

Proponents also pointed out at the time that the subcommittee meetings were open to the public. Members of the public pointed out that the subcommittee members huddled together at tables set at a sufficient distance that spectators seldom could hear what was happening. There were no microphones and scant effort by the subcommittee members to make their voices heard.

Here’s what The Daily News Record said:

Two years ago, the House voted to change the rules to allow subcommittees to kill legislation, although critics said that bills should not be killed by a few people without a recorded vote. The critics had a good point, if not the majority of votes.

From the AP via WTOP: Va. House Floor Clash Prompts Partisan Meltdown:

What little remained of bipartisanship in the House of Delegates lay in shambles Thursday after a rare procedural move by Republicans triggered a fierce floor dispute.

The extraordinary partisan rancor arose over a delegate’s routine request to withdraw a bill he sponsored and left in doubt whether the House GOP majority and the Democrats can cooperate effectively in the remaining 43 days of the 2008 General Assembly.

“It was not a good day for the commonwealth,” House Democratic Leader Ward L. Armstrong said after lambasting the GOP as bullies and tyrants.

“They put a bill in, then they’re too cowardly to take a vote on it,” House GOP Leader H. Morgan Griffith said after the clash.

And you’re too cowardly to record subcommittee votes…

Del. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, had asked that his legislation to allow collective bargaining by state and local government employees be withdrawn. Such requests are often made and routinely granted every year.

But Republicans refused, intent on forcing Democrats to take a floor vote that could potentially alienate unions, among the Democrats’ most generous constituencies.

In a roll call vote, the House’s 53 Republicans and two allied independents voted against a motion to withdraw the bill for the year while 43 Democrats voted for it.

The floor speeches that ensued bordered on breaching the House’s nearly 400-year-old rules on civility: fingers jabbed angrily toward partisan adversaries amid icy glares and hot rhetoric.

Armstrong, D-Henry, urged his fellow Democrats not to debate or vote on a subsequent motion to engross and advance Ebbin’s bill, then pointed toward the Virginia flag bearing the state motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (thus always to tyrants).

“The tyranny of the majority is what you want, it’s what you shall have,” Armstrong said.

Griffith shot back: “I have not heard such philosophical tripe in all my years here, in all my life.”

The ensuing roll call showed 55 Republicans, two conservative independents and two Democrats voting not to advance the bill. There were no votes in favor of it, and 42 of the House’s 44 Democrats did not vote.

Then, invoking a rare parliamentary privilege, Republicans singled out 25 Democrats who did not vote and, one-by-one, ordered that the official record reflect that they had voted no, just as the Republicans had, creating an inflated final count of 82-0 to effectively kill Ebbin’s bill. Griffith said he quit after 25 because he got tired.

After the vote, Del. Lionel Spruill, D-Portsmouth, was angry but worried. “This _ the rest of this session _ is going to be rough if we can’t find a way to put this behind us.”

Griffith acknowledged a measure of payback in making an issue of Democrats’ ties to labor. Unions have helped Democrats gain House seats in every legislative election since 2003.

Remember this when a Delegate says they don’t have the time to cover certain bills or issues.

So…full-time funding for the Commonwealth’s Attorney of Caroline County? When is the hearing for that going to be?

When is the hearing to fix the completely FUBAR Composite Index that counts federally owned property (that the feds don’t pay real estate taxes on) as an income source for the county? Meaning the county loses money from the state because the state says the county is getting money from the feds when they’re not.

But no, we have to do one-by-one votes for a bill just to pay back a group.

UPDATE: Fred2Blue has more.

Raising Kaine: House Republicans Reject Open Government

UPDATE: Hiliarity from the AP via NBC4: Va. House Kills Bid To Record Subcommittee Votes:

Democrats failed Wednesday in an effort to prevent bills from being killed anonymously by a handful of House of Delegates members in sparsely attended subcommittee meetings.

Open government groups and organizations as disparate as the conservative Virginia Club for Growth, the League of Women Voters and the AARP had called for requiring recorded votes when a subcommittee acts on a bill.

But on a nearly party-line 45-54 vote, the first substantial policy issue vote taken in the opening hour of the 2008 General Assembly, Republicans used their majority to defeat the amendment offered by Del. Kenneth R. Plum.

“The public’s right to know is a basic tenet of all we do. It’s why we pass freedom of information law,” said Plum, D-Fairfax.

Virginia’s part-time legislature relies heavily on its committee system to vet legislation and either advance it to the House or Senate floor or kill it. Committees appoint subcommittees to edit and amend the bills before they come before the full committee. Votes were not recorded, but subcommittees could not kill bills.

Two years ago, the House changed the rules to allow subcommittees to kill legislation. Critics objected that bills should not be killed by a few people without a recorded vote.

Plum argued Wednesday that some subcommittees consist of as few as five delegates, that they can meet with a quorum, which is three delegates, and that a majority of that quorum — just two delegates — can kill a bill with no record of their action. And because subcommittees often huddle at odd times ranging from dawn to evening hours in out-of-the-way niches across Capitol Square, it’s difficult if not impossible for the press or public to monitor them.

“The public needs to know how we conduct our business,” he argued.

House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith countered that requiring recorded votes for subcommittees would make an already heavy work load of about 3,000 bills over just 60 days almost unbearable.

“If we go to this process, we might as well forget about subcommittees and go to hearing all bills in full committee,” said Griffith, R-Salem.

House Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong, D-Henry County, argued that a transparent legislature is more important to voters and taxpayers than a streamlined one.

“If want to take (Griffith’s) argument that this saves time, gee, think how much time could be saved if we didn’t bother with recorded votes here on the floor,” Armstrong said.