Screening Out the Sunshine

Open government took a hit in Virginia this year as the Republican majority in the House of Delegates forced through rules that reduced public participation in the legislative process and shielded legislators from accountability for their votes.

Under rules adopted at the beginning of the 2006 session of the General Assembly -- and over the objection of the Democratic minority in the House -- committee chairmen were given the power to assign bills to subcommittees for consideration. Subcommittees can have as few as five members and a quorum of three. Because a bill can be denied further debate without ever getting out of subcommittee, that means that just three delegates can decide a bill's fate.

Public participation in the creation of bills also has been reduced by scheduling subcommittee meetings as early as 6:30 a.m. or in the evenings. One of my Reston constituents, for example, had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to make a 6:30 a.m. subcommittee meeting in Richmond.

Further, because the House has many more subcommittees than it has meeting rooms, subcommittees often meet in conference rooms with little space for spectators, forcing onlookers to spill into the halls. Conference rooms also lack sound systems, so only those closest to the table can hear what is going on.

This subcommittee system has reduced the accountability of House members in other ways, too. For example, no recorded votes are taken in the subcommittees; all voting is by voice, with the chairman announcing the results. Only by quickly reading the lips of members can a spectator know how each member voted. Members of the public who don't attend a particular subcommittee meeting may never know who voted for what.

Without recorded votes in the subcommittees, many bills now appear in the official Legislative Information System records as having been referred to committee with no additional action shown. The support or opposition of delegates to the proposed bills is not reported.

In the 2006 session, 1,951 bills were introduced by House members, but the disposition of 615 is not recorded because the bills were killed in subcommittee with no recorded vote. Only 13 bills were killed with a recorded vote. By contrast, in the legislative session in 2004, only nine bills failed without a recorded vote. Of the 1,807 considered that year, 524 failed

but they all had a recorded action by a committee.

The outcome on legislation may not have been changed by this change in recording rules, but certainly the public's ability to participate and the accountability of legislators have been reduced drastically.

The public is the loser in the House Republicans' abuse of power because the sunshine that is supposed to illuminate the workings of the commonwealth's government has been intentionally dimmed.

-- Kenneth R. Plum

a Democrat, represents Reston in the Virginia House of Delegates.

KenPlum@aol.com