Live Blogging the DebateI plan to share my thoughts about the outcome of yesterday's debate more fully at a later time. For now, I just wanted to respond to my queries about the motion to recommit the marriage equality bill to committee.
The House of Delegates agreed on a unanimous voice vote to recommit the bill to the House Judiciary Committee. This decision effectively kills the bill for the year. Many people naturally wonder why no vote was taken after all of the hard work that was done to advance the bill by so many people inside and outside of the legislature. Proponents agreed to this because they fell a few votes short of those needed to pass the bill on the floor of the House.
The argument for a vote is clear. People have a right to know where their legislators stand on such an important issue. Regardless of the outcome, it would have been the democratic process in action with delegates reflecting the will of their constituents and acting as our representatives.
On the other hand, proponents would have lost by a greater number than the closeness of the unofficial count because some "yes" votes would have become "no" votes. Legislators in marginal districts who might have been willing to stick their necks out to pass a meaningful piece of legislation would not do so if the legislation was going to fail.
Additionally, going forward, it is a lot harder to convert the votes of people who have cast a vote on the floor against marriage than it is to gain the votes of the undecided or who have said they oppose it but have yet to cast an actual vote on the topic. The thought behind not holding a vote is that it makes it easier to bring it up again next year and also does not demoralize opponents in other states. That was the thinking behind the decision to recommit.
1 comment:
Dave, you wrote that you would write more about the motion to recommit, but I finally decided to respond before the session is over. I have to disagree with some of your conclusions. As you noted, among those groups that worked for the bill there is a controversy over the decision to recommit. One side maintains losing the vote in MD would have hurt the cause nationally. They also feared the cascade effect you cited. The other side wanted a floor vote to put officials on record so their district residents could hold them accountable and try to change their vote next year. They dismiss the cascade effect, noting that unlike other states; Maryland legislators all vote electronically from their desks and results are not disclosed until all the votes are in.
Others of us who know how the Maryland General Assembly (MGA) works, no matter our position on Marriage Bill, are more concerned with the MGA's impenetrable cloak-room mentality. The MGA's tradition of avoiding going on the record whenever possible is hard to break. When challenged that the voters have a right to know, legislators come up with incredibly convoluted excuses. One popular one even from those in "safe" districts is that voters would not understand and it would take too long to explain their rationales to their constituents.
This is poppycock, and these same legislators knew that before they got elected. Once in office, they seem to lose their righteousness, and fall in with the Annapolis crowd championing unaccountability and opaqueness.
MGA has made some progress in the last two years. Until this year, one had to go to Annapolis to find out what happened in Committee meetings. That was fine for professional lobbyists who are paid to be there, but if an average citizen wanted to know, he/she had to drive to Annapolis to have the paper vote transcription photocopied. Starting with this legislative session, that changed due to the work of a few legislators (principally Delegate Heather Mizeur) and a number of citizen organizations (chief among them the Maryland Transparency and Equal Access to Government Coalition).
Del. Mizeur's Bill did not pass last year (no surprise there), but thanks to President Miller and Speaker Busch some changes were put into effect. Now Committee votes are online, as well as video/audio of House/Senate Committee hearings.
But the MGA is still a murky place. Committee voting on bills/amendments is still not recorded and what happens in Subcommittee, where many bills are amended, sometimes into an unrecognizable proposal, is still often undiscoverable. Even in this age of open government, transparency, and instant access to information, many Subcommittees neither record votes nor take minutes. Some do, but most do not. No record of votes is required. If a voter wants to know why a bill was reported out with an unfavorable recommendation or how it was amended into a format no one would support, there is no way to find out.
There is also the "desk drawer veto." All bills that are introduced into the MGA are supposed to be voted on, but some bills just disappear. In an apparent wink at the rules, by tradition the Chair has absolute discretion over how and when to move a bill, and if they just do not get around moving it, well that is just the breaks. That way there is no one to clearly blame.
The objective, of course, is to keep incumbents in place. The MGA is an old-boy/old-gal network, and they protect their own (which is why they do not tattle on each other about what transpires in subcommittee). They do not want the public to know what goes on.
This is also why no one should be surprised when the legislative sponsors of the Marriage Equality Bill did not ask for a floor vote. When in doubt, each chamber has too often opted for secrecy over open government, and until citizens demand transparency, nothing will change.
Luis Zapata
Chair, MD TEAG
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