Democrat Rep Bill Baber (D- Hyperbole) has an editorial at Fosters.com in which he gives us his thoughts on Roll Call votes, transparency, and the legislative process. Bill begins by asking, “Is the public well informed on the work of the legislature?” This is the wind up.
If you mean are average voters well informed? No. They are not well informed, mostly by choice, and more so in recent months thanks to a decline in press presence at the State house. But neither interest level nor depth of press coverage (nor cost–real or imagined) has any bearing on the need or desire for transparency in government.
Government is pure force and nothing else. Anyone who cedes such power through the electoral process not only has the right but should expect to be able to gaze through the looking glass at their convenience and know who and what has been done in their name.
Rep Baber is burdened by other concerns about transparency, more suited to the expert legislator. Transparency is a game.
According to the House Clerk’s office, in the not distant past, the House would see some 50 roll call votes each year. Recently, that number would often pass 20 in a single day. The increase coincides with the development of active factions within the Republican party. It is understandable that those holding a minority position may want to score legislators on their votes. However, the use has now devolved into a tactic to delay and obstruct the work of the House. Given the nearly even split among Republican factions this year, the prospects for abuse of roll calls may escalate.
Bill? William? It is impossible for the NH House to have too much transparency. There can never be too many roll call votes. Every act of the legislature should be recorded, every vote recorded. To suggest otherwise labels the public servant as ill-suited to the post, and if cost is a concern find the savings elsewhere. The people deserve no less than a complete and unedited account of the acts of their government because they are acts against their persons and property that have no meaning if the state is unwilling to use police powers to enforce them.
I know I’m just some pesky blogger but…if every vote was recorded by rule then there would be no need to request it, no “seconds,” nothing devolved nothing delayed. No abuses to be had. Faction-less Roll calls. Roll calls for the benefit of THE PEOPLE!
I’m sorry, is that solution too easy?
Bill Baber also writes that, “It is understandable that those holding a minority position may want to score legislators on their votes.”
If every vote was recorded….does William know that all the Democrats on the rules committee wanted to change the policy in favor of less transparency? If maintaining transparency is a calculated minority opinion to expose voting records and Democrats are in the minority, then we have a problem. The problem might be limited to Bill, but it may also suggest that the “minority” to whom he refers are those who did not select Shawn Jasper to be Speaker. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
Mr. Baber then goes on to suggest that there are features to the legislative process that are confusing and complex and that roll call votes are (in fact) very expensive and probably not cost effective. Add this to the number of bills facing the legislature and his trust in the press to find the important bits for public consumption, and we can only conclude that more transparency (more roll call votes) is unnecessary or not worth the price.
There is a lot here to criticize.
The cost per roll call quoted is ironically grotesque in its lack of transparency.
Bill lets loose with a figure of $1700.00 per roll call vote, which he credits to the House clerks, but ( I assume) because of that column inches problem, there’s no room to break that down. I think that sum relates to staff work related to every vote, regardless of a roll call. That part has probably never changed much, though how roll call votes are recorded and shared has.
New technology was implemented to reduce the time and cost of “transparency.” Roll call votes are all electronic, on the fly, and off to the General Court web site in a matter of minutes–where interested parties can view them shortly after they are cast – at their convenience. So Roll call votes alone represent a fraction of Baber’s scary number.
It’s a science and technology thing (oddly enough the committee on which Baber sits). Someone in a previous legislature actually went to the trouble of improving transparency which Mr. Bill (Oh Noooo) has intimated (at 20 roll calls in a single day) would be an expensive price to pay for factional game-playing.
If cost in government is really a concern for a Democrat, (I’ll wait while you laugh…..) then the solution is not fewer roll call votes, it is fewer votes altogether.
Did you know that in ‘the not distant past’ the house had biennial sessions? Reps were elected for two years but only had to appear for one, just a few days over a few months, to set the budget, wrestle with a few issues, and then go home or back to work unless needed. And “needed’ probably meant that State spending was not lining up with revenue or there was a natural disaster.
Nowadays politicians like Bill Baber think needed means taxing your view, empowering game wardens to write speeding tickets, deciding a state’s interest in love, micro-managing rain-water, wood-stove smoke, the volume of water your toilet uses, disarming citizens, keeping people from talking while they drive, taxing everything moving or stationary, or just expanding the bureaucracy so the Governor wont feel lonely while the legislature is away, which it no longer is…and that is awfully expensive.
The answer to cost cutting is not to hide the work you do in our name, it is to return to biennial session. Reps who do not have to drive to Concord those extra months in the second year would save taxpayers a small fortune in mileage reimbursements, and there would be no votes to record, no staff needed to record them, no overtime to pay for, and none of those pricey factional minority games we’ve been warned about.
And why not. At least half of those 950 bills (each and every year) are little more than ridiculous intrusions on the lives of otherwise capable adults. The other half are tweaks to bills no one every should have proposed in the first place, and the rest are efforts to hide what government does by giving legislative power to pencil pushers who don’t have to answer to voters; hiding how government uses force upon the people it exists to serve.
Half the roll calls, half the votes, half the House journals, half the mileage, and that $100.00 each rep gets paid per term just doubled in value. And just think how many more ordinary everyday citizens would line up to represent their towns and cities if they knew they’d only have to appear for a few days each week over a few months in the first session?
I’m scaring Democrats.
Finally, the legislative process is not complex.
Mr. Baber has also pronounced the legislative process as too complex. For him? Heavens no, he is an expert. You need him. But I contend that the process is not complex.
It can appear confusing to anyone disinterested in the process, but if “factional Republicans” can understand it–people who according to most Democrats are one step up from cave dwelling morons who only discovered fire so they could carry firearms–then average Joe or Jane voter could probably glean the process in fewer words than William birthed in an editorial in which he insults their intelligence with regard to roll call votes.
It’s simple. Floor votes in the NH House are made for or against what the committee decided about the bill. A bill goes to committee. If the committee says it sucks–we should kill it, it is inexpedient to legislate or ITL; you vote yes to agree to kill it or a no to save it. If the committee says we love this bill lets make it a law they tell the House this bill Ought to Pass or OTP; a yes vote is to pass it, and a no vote is to kill it.
Coincidentally, when a roll call vote is posted, it actually tells you if the vote is to ITL or OTP a bill.
There are are legislative rules, rules of order, backroom rules for getting around rules, opportunities for scheming and gamesmanship (it is called politics) but they have nothing to do with the need for transparency when the games end and the voting begins. Votes are, after all, the only thing that matters, and if you can read and know positive from negative, you are at least as smart as the dwindling number of professional reporters at the State House upon whom Bill would prefer you rely for your legislative updates.
In summation, Rep Baber has intimated to his constituents that legislating is intellectually beyond them but the cost to insure their understanding is beneath them. The professional press and concerned legislators like himself will provide all they need to know, and efforts to delay their work under the guise of increasing transparency are nothing more than expensive parlor tricks performed by minority factions.
Is transparency fading in the NH House? Only if Rep Baber has his way.
