Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-20) has launched an online petition in support of her Open Government Act. We have previously said that the bill "would enable free public access to the General Assembly's 'up-to-the-minute' bill tracking service, which is currently available only for an $800 fee; post General Assembly committee agendas a day in advance; webcast committee hearings; and substantially open up the proceedings of the Board of Public Works, which currently has the power to implement gigantic budget cuts without public input." We ask our readers to review the petition (which currently has 104 supporters) and consider signing on if they agree with it.
Showing posts with label Open Government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Government. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Mizeur Builds Massive Support for Open Government Act
Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-20) has amassed 75 House co-sponsors and 30 Senate co-sponsors, a majority in each chamber, for her sweeping Maryland Open Government Act. The bill, which is lead-sponsored by Nancy King (D-39) in the Senate, would enable free public access to the General Assembly's "up-to-the-minute" bill tracking service, which is currently available only for an $800 fee; post General Assembly committee agendas a day in advance; webcast committee hearings; and substantially open up the proceedings of the Board of Public Works, which currently has the power to implement gigantic budget cuts without public input. Mizeur deserves credit for crafting a comprehensive bill and attracting widespread and bi-partisan support for it. We reprint her press release below.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Senate Democrats Announce Legislative Agenda
The Senate Democratic Caucus has released its legislative agenda for 2010 in a press release that we reprint below. The agenda includes Delegate Kirill Reznik's (D-39) bill preventing employers from using credit scores in hiring and promotion decisions. Additionally, the Senate will adopt a rule change this week requiring that committee votes be posted on-line within ten days, matching a similar move by the House.
Busch: Committee Votes will be Posted Online
Speaker of the House Mike Busch has directed the House Office of Information systems to post committee votes on the General Assembly website prior to the arrival of bills on the floor starting in this session. This would accomplish the purpose of online committee vote reporting more rapidly than would any legislation. We reprint a memo from the Speaker's Office on this subject below.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Barking for Transparency
You’ve seen this before. It’s a quiet night in the neighborhood. Then one dog barks. And then another. And another. Soon the entire neighborhood is full of barking. So it is with liberals howling on behalf of transparency.
This round of noise in the night started with Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39), who proposed a bill based on a good idea: committee votes should be just as accessible on the General Assembly’s website as are floor votes. Ali worked the press hard on this issue, obtaining editorial support from both the Post and the Sun. But Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-20) said that Ali’s bill was not enough, arguing along with Common Cause Executive Director Ryan O’Donnell for a package of bills. And then Delegate Luiz Simmons (D-17) slammed Mizeur for not addressing the ancient practice by Committee Chairs of putting bills “in the drawer,” or not holding votes on them at all. Most improbably, individuals associated with Montgomery County’s Progressive Neighbors claim credit for the idea too, even seeking to trademark Las Vegas’ celebrated tourist slogan for themselves. Don’t they understand that successful advocacy groups heap credit upon their bill sponsors and not upon themselves? Now even the Republicans are involved.
And then this shameful squabble erupted on Delegate Ali’s Facebook page. The bickering goes on too long to fit on one screenshot, but it is enough for our readers to get the idea.
Meanwhile, little logistical work has been done. Who is briefing the presiding officers and their staff? Did anyone bother to do that before running off panting to the newspapers? Who is talking to the relevant Committee Chairs who will consider the bill(s)? Who is lobbying the committee members? Who is assembling research on how other states disclose committee votes, and on the benefits that ensue? Who is putting in the difficult, but invisible work of actually getting something passed? Is anyone? Or is everyone so busy getting their names into the press that no one is doing any work?
The only result of all of this barking for attention so far is to create mirth in the halls of Annapolis. One spy in the capital had this comment on the fracas:The transparency proposals are modifications of an idea that Republicans started pushing three years ago. In 2007, Warren Miller and Alex Mooney (two of the most conservative Republicans in the legislature) sponsored a transparency bill (it failed). In 2008, they brought it back, and it passed unanimously. In 2009, Verna Jones sponsored a bill (which passed unanimously), and the Senate began putting committee votes online. This year, everyone's trying to get in the mix. Heather Mizeur and Saqib Ali introduced bills. The Republicans in both chambers proposed rule changes. Nancy King wrote to the Senate President to request a rule change. And Common Cause is floating around, hopelessly unaware of what's happening or how to affect the outcome. If anything is going to happen, look for the Democratic leadership in both chambers to make the issue their own and resolve it without legislation... long before a hearing is even scheduled on Mizeur or Ali's proposals.
And so the most likely outcome is a limited administrative change. As for the broader agenda pushed by squabbling liberals? All of you Redskins fans should be acquainted with the phrase, “There’s always next year.”
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Nancy King Proposes Easier Access to Committee Votes
Senator Nancy King (D-39) has written Senate President Mike Miller asking that Senate committee votes be made more accessible to the public. King points out that committee votes began appearing in the Senate Journal in 2009, but they are not linked to the General Assembly's searchable floor vote database. The House Journal does not contain committee votes. King's proposal falls in line with the opinions of some, including Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18), that online committee vote reporting could be implemented through administrative changes rather than through legislation such as that proposed by Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39).
We reproduce Senator King's letter below.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Pass the Legislative Voting Sunshine Act (Update)
“What happens in Annapolis stays in Annapolis.” Such is the custom for much of what goes on in the General Assembly’s committees, which perform a great deal of the work of the legislative branch. But Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39) wants to change that with a bill calling for the posting of committee votes on the Internet. We wholeheartedly agree.
Nearly all legislative work starts in one of the General Assembly’s standing committees, each of which has jurisdiction over certain categories of issues affecting the state government, its economy and its residents. Individual legislators draft bills and sometimes seek co-sponsors for them, after which they are assigned to one of the committees. The committees review the bills, hold hearings, consider amendments and may hold votes, after which the bills head to the floor and then on to the other chamber. Differing versions of bills must be reconciled by the two chambers. If the same legislation passes both the House and the Senate, it is eligible for the Governor’s signature. In the VAST majority of cases, no bill gets to the Governor’s desk without first passing through committee.
We have written before about many of these committees’ tendency to deliberate in secret. That practice is bad enough. Just as bad is the fact that committee votes are not posted on the General Assembly’s website. They are only available on written tally sheets that must be physically picked up by visitors to the statehouse. And so legislators, staffers, lobbyists and insiders can obtain them easily but members of the public must expend significant effort to lay hands on them. It is yet another way that those in power can avoid scrutiny of their actions.
Delegate Ali wants committee votes to be available online for all to see. His Legislative Voting Sunshine Act states:(A) The result of a roll call vote taken on a bill, an amendment to a bill, or any other motion relating to a bill in a standing committee shall be made available on the General Assembly website at the same time that the report of the standing committee on the bill is made available on the website.
Ali’s bill will meet resistance. When we began posting committee vote sheets last spring, some legislators called your author to express dismay. (Perhaps they do not understand that such calls only encourage us to dig further.) Adding to the nervousness of Annapolis was the fact that Nancy Navarro’s negative mailers against Delegate Ben Kramer (D-19) were partly based on his committee votes. That hints at a common perception in Annapolis: some legislators may vote differently in committee than they do on the floor because they believe the public is less likely to find out about committee action. Ali’s bill would end all of that.
(B) The result of the roll call vote posted under Subsection (A) of this section shall indicate:
(1) How each member of the standing committee voted on a bill, an amendment to a bill, or any other motion relating to a bill; and
(2) Which members made the motion and seconded the motion.
Here is a question for the state legislators: if floor votes are online, why should committee votes not be? What makes them less deserving of the eyes of the public?
The flamboyant Ali may not be the ideal sponsor of this bill. His colleagues may be tempted to vote against it simply out of resentment of his extraordinary press-hogging talents. They better not. Because if this bill dies in committee, your author will be sure to post the tally sheet. No bunker will be deep enough to conceal the enemies of open government.
Update: Brian Griffiths, the leading conservative blogger in Maryland, has also written in support of the bill.
Update 2: The Post now supports the bill.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Star Chambers of Annapolis
Maryland’s Open Meetings Act, originally passed in 1977, is one of the state’s greatest laws. The act requires multi-member public bodies with a quorum to open their meetings to the citizenry and give them reasonable advance notice of their date, location and time. The statute is generally observed at the state, county and municipal levels with occasional violations subject to investigation by a compliance board. But there is at least one institution in the state that often violates the spirit of the law with no consequence:
The committees of the General Assembly.
Maryland’s General Assembly operates under a strong committee system. Every state legislator is assigned to one committee. That committee’s Chair runs the meetings and schedules consideration and votes on bills. Some committees have sub-committees with their own Chairs. The committees are the location of much of the action in the legislature. They are where the bills are studied and debated, testimony is heard and amendments are usually considered (although floor amendments are also possible). Bills pass, change and fail in committee. If a bill cannot emerge from its committee with a favorable report, it almost always dies.
Technically speaking, committee meetings are open to the public. But some committees discourage attendance at their work sessions, especially by bill advocates. It is common knowledge in the capital’s lobbying community that some Chairs will not hold votes or discussion on bills if their advocates are watching. There is never any official admonition, but merely a long-standing culture that direct observation of the legislative process is discouraged. One lobbyist tells us, “Anyone who operates in Annapolis does not recognize the difference between discouraged and forbidden.”
Those who violate the informal rule are sometimes met with an angry stare, a refusal to consider the bill in front of the violator or even a dead bill. One legislator laughs, “You can come, but you’ll be punished. They will exact street justice on you! It’s a control mechanism they use to allow bills to be killed without paying a political price.” Two old Annapolis veterans tell us it has been this way “forever.”
Another tactic used to discourage observers is snap meetings. Some committee Chairs announce their meetings on the floor, which is open to the public, but do it on short notice. Others just do it on the fly. Out-of-the-way rooms may be picked and agendas may or may not be released. Bill advocates sometimes do not know when their bills are considered and discover their fate after the fact. Subcommittee details can be even harder to discover. While committee votes are recorded (but not released on the Internet), subcommittee votes are not. Part of the lack of notice is due to the madhouse quality of some periods of the General Session, especially near the end. But some Chairs make no effort to inform the public of their committees’ activities ahead of time.
The consequences of access problems are significant. Committee votes may be recorded but deliberations are not. Lobbyists and advocates cannot witness the give and take between legislators as they discuss a bill. As one lobbyist puts it, “You don’t know who screwed you.” One legislator refers to the Chair’s “drawer,” a black hole in which doomed bills are deposited without the knowledge of their advocates. Another legislator tells us, “We have an open meetings act in Maryland for a reason and the committees should comply with its provisions. The unwritten policy of discouraging members of the public from watching voting sessions is more about protecting weak, spineless committee members than it is about serving any legitimate public interest.”
Not all committees operate in this way. We hear that some of the more open ones include Senate Finance (chaired by Senator Mac Middleton), Senate Budget and Taxation (chaired by Senator Ulysses Currie) and House Ways and Means (chaired by Delegate Sheila Hixson). Montgomery County Delegation meetings are open to the public and can be well-attended. The press go wherever they want, assuming they can find out where the committee meetings are and what they are working on.
Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39) was the only legislator to comment on these practices on-the-record. When I asked him whether some committees discouraged public attendance, he replied:It is true. It is one of the irksome things about Annapolis. At least now the House (but not the Senate) make videos of bill hearings available over the Intranet. But still, voting sessions are not available. And the presence of advocates or interested parties during voting sessions can often get a bill killed.
Another example for the legislature is the Montgomery County Council. All council and committee meeting agendas are posted on the council’s website, often a week or more in advance. All staff memos and documents are also posted on the website. Members of the public are never discouraged from attending. A bill advocate can follow legislation through committee all the way to the final vote with no pushback. It is simply the culture of the place.
We ought to be encouraging transparency and accountability, not discouraging it. The New York State Senate just launched a state-of-the-art new website that allows unprecedented public participation in the legislative process. We would do well to emulate them in this regard.... and that's about the ONLY thing we should copy about the New York State Senate!!
Ultimately, this issue comes down to whether the General Assembly will obey the spirit of Maryland’s Open Meetings Act and adhere to the values of free and fair democracy. Running a committee is a challenging job, especially in the last chaotic weeks of a General Session. Last-minute changes and quick meetings are inevitable. But the committee Chairs, and their supervisors in leadership, must make every effort to protect the right of the public to watch them deliberate at every level.
Dear readers, we are going to stay on this issue until we see some improvement. The state legislators should learn to enjoy the sunshine because, ray by ray, it will come in.
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