The General Assembly convened on Wednesday, 1/9/08. Things are moving along at an incredi-ble clip, and we will all need to work fast and smart to keep up.
Unrecorded Votes: The Secret Society
There is already a very significant setback. When the General Assembly convened, despite an-other effort this year by Del. Kenneth R. Plum (D-Fairfax) to have votes recorded in subcommit-tee proceedings, the effort was defeated.
This means, when bills are voted down by subcommittees, we will not know who voted for and who voted against.
DOESN’T THIS SEEM UNFAIR, AND PERHAPS EVEN COWARDLY?
There is no reason votes should go unrecorded in this era of fast, easy, and cheap technology to record ALL votes ALL the time. On what grounds does House Majority Leader H. Morgan Grif-fith (R-Salem) claim that unrecorded votes help the legislature get through proposed bills? That is pure and simple hogwash. If there is trouble getting through proposed bills, how about limita-tions on the number of bills, or making the session longer? There is no reason that Virginia, hardly a state controlled only by agriculture, can claim a short session every winter is good for the state!
Think about it. Do you really want people in the General Assembly who oppose having their votes be known? Do you want your legislators to hide their vote from you?
Are we to be driven to bringing video cameras into hearings of subcommittees and posting vol-unteers right down at the dias to determine who said yes, who said no, and who was conveniently out for coffee and didn’t vote at all?
As one citizen advocate offered, “Once again, pre-dawn meetings of small committees can be-have badly, do tremendous harm to VA's animals and citizens and there is no public record of it.”
What can you do?
First, contact Del. Plum and thank him for trying again this year to have all subcommittee votes recorded. His full name: Kenneth R. Plum; his email: DelKPlum@house.state.va.us
Next contact your delegate. If you aren’t sure who that is, use this: http://conview.state.va.us/whosmy.nsf/main?openform
The delegates – all 99 of them (there’s a vacancy as Del. Wittman is now Congressman Witt-man) voted. The list is at the end of this message. Your delegate is in that list!
If your delegate voted in favor of the public’s right to know, contact your delegate, tell your delegate thank you, and ask them to work to change this outcome so there are no longer unre-corded votes in the General Assembly.
If your delegate voted to keep votes unrecorded in subcommittees, contact your delegate and say this is not our America or our Virginia.
Del. William R. Janis, R-Henrico (see the full article from the 1/10/08 column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Olympia Meola at the end of this alert) said “There’s nothing nefarious going on here”. Good news! Nothing nefarious! Then why mind if the votes are recorded? Do those you represent have no business knowing what you do? Shame on you, Del. Janis, and on all the others who do not support the public’s right to know about subcommittee votes that effect pro-posed legislation.
Unrecorded votes breed other abuses, we believe. We can tell you from our attendance at several subcommittee meetings during the 2007 session, that the voice vote did not seem to comport with the vote called “official”, and there were two instances at least when a quorum appeared not to be present when a vote – again, unrecorded, took place.
According to Scott Maddrea, Deputy Clerk of Committee Operations (and again from Ms Meola’s article), there were 459 bills in 2006 and 603 bills in 2007 killed in subcommittees, and the legislators voting to kill them are to this day not known. And some of them were very impor-tant. For instance, in both 2006 and 2007 unrecorded votes killed our bills to outlaw the use of gas chambers.
Are you angry? We are.
More soon. In the meanwhile, keep your eye on the website for the General Assembly, particu-larly in the Legislative Information System: http://leg1.state.va.us/
Thank you.
Lillian Clancy and Don Marro
Received from Mr. Maddrea (above) on 1/10/08 regarding the vote:
HOUSE OF DELEGATES RCS# 5
GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF VIRGINIA
2008 REGULAR SESSION 1/09/2008 12:55:07 PM
2008-2009 RULES
OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
FLOOR AMENDMENT PLUM
ADOPTION
YEAS - - 45 NAYS - - 54 RULE 69 - - 0 NOT VOTING – 0 *FAILED
YEAS – 45
Alexander Eisenberg McClellan Sickles
Amundson Englin Melvin Spruill
Armstrong Hall Miller, P.J. Toscano
BaCote Howell, A.T. Moran Tyler
Barlow Hull Morrissey Valentine
Bouchard Joannou Nichols Vanderhye
Bowling Johnson Phillips Ward
Brink Jones, D.C. Plum Ware, O.
Bulova Lewis Poisson Watts
Caputo Marsden Scott, J.M.
Dance Marshall, R.G. Shannon
Ebbin Mathieson Shuler
NAYS – 54
Abbitt Gilbert Loupassi Poindexter
Albo Griffith Marshall, D.W. Purkey
Athey Hamilton Massie Putney
Bell Hargrove May Rust
Byron Hogan Merricks Saxman
Carrico Hugo Miller, J.H. Scott, E.T.
Cline Iaquinto Morgan Sherwood
Cole Ingram Nixon Suit
Cosgrove Janis Nutter Tata
Cox Jones, S.C. O’Bannon Ware, R.L.
Crockett-Stark Kilgore Oder Wright
Fralin Landes Orrock Mr. Speaker
Frederick Lingamfelter Peace
Gear Lohr Pogge
ABSTENSIONS UNDER RULE 69 – 0
NOT VOTING – 0
_____________________________________________________________________________
And from the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
House GOP retains subcommittee vote rule
Unrecorded votes will still be allowed to kill legislation
Thursday, Jan 10, 2008 - 12:09 AM
By OLYMPIA MEOLA
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
A bill that would have banned smoking in state buildings and certain restaurants died in 2007 thanks to a subcommittee and a voice vote.
It was one of 600 bills that year that saw a similar fate -- sometimes perishing in early morning meetings on a majority vote of just a few lawmakers.
House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said yesterday that allowing bills to die in subcommittees on unrecorded votes helps a part-time legislature to get through the thousands of measures filed each year. House Democrats say it lacks transparency.
Yesterday Democrats unsuccessfully challenged the practice for a second time. The measure died 54-45 on the House floor as delegates hashed through and eventually adopted rules on the opening day of the General Assembly session.
"The public's right to know is a basic tenet of all we do," said Del. Kenneth R. Plum, D-Fairfax, who proposed the amendment.
Weeding out ill-fated bills is essential, Griffith countered.
"We can't spend countless hours on bills that have no chance," he said.
Committees appoint subcommittees to work on bills before they go before the full committee. Previously, votes were not recorded, but subcommittees could not kill bills. The House changed the rules in 2006 to allow subcommittees to quash legislation.
Democrats failed in their attempt to change the rules last year. This year they were encouraged by indications that some Republicans would defect and support a rule change, but the vote was nearly along party lines.
Del. Terry G. Kilgore, R-Scott, former chairman of the House GOP Caucus, said after the vote that the caucus debated the issue and he was bound by the caucus majority to support the rule.
William R. Janis, R-Henrico, supported the practice as a matter of streamlining. He said re-cording the votes would take more time.
"There's nothing nefarious going on here," he said.
Del. Dwight Clinton Jones, D-Richmond, voted to change the rule.
"There's not enough sunshine in the rules," he said. "It's operating in a clandestine manor."
Scott Maddrea, deputy clerk of committee operations, said his office has counted 603 bills in 2007 and 459 in 2006 that were not acted on by a full committee, and in effect, killed. Of those bills, one or two dozen could have been left in committee for reasons other than a subcommittee reporting back unfavorably, he said.
Business in the Senate yesterday progressed relatively smoothly, albeit more slowly than the House.
"I would hope the cooperation we saw here today will continue for 60 days," said Senate Major-ity Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax.
"You've joined one of the best clubs in America," Saslaw told his colleagues, including nine new members.
The House of Delegates swore in 10 new members yesterday. "This is not a combat zone. This is a place where things get done."
Contact Olympia Meola at (804) 649-6812 or omeola@timesdispatch.com.
Staff writers Tyler Whitley and Jim Nolan contributed to this report.