Time for the Scoppe Solution?



By Cindi Scoppe of The State

Efforts to help voters figure out how their legislators are voting are not, as some Senate Democrats claim, a waste of time. Nor are they a subterfuge, as some tea partiers insist.

The Senate’s new internal rule, like the one adopted by the House last year, requires recorded votes on all but congratulatory resolutions at each step in the process: on second reading, on third reading if any changes are made, when the House or Senate considers changes by the other body, on conference committee reports.

This will result in a tremendous amount of wasted time, because most bills are necessary but boring measures that no one in the world would ever object to. But it’s progress because, contrary to the assertions during last week’s Senate debate, legislators do pass controversial bills by voice vote. Although House and Senate rules allow 10 representatives or three senators to demand roll-call votes, lawmakers often don’t when they should. And although some critics object to adding these requirements only to the House and Senate’s internal rules, rather than in a state law of questionable enforceability, both bodies have a better track record at obeying their own rules than at obeying state laws or the state constitution.

But there’s a legitimate reason legislators haven’t always demanded recorded votes: The question of whether a bill passes is rarely in doubt, which is why everybody joins hands, sings “Kumbayah” and votes “aye” on final passage of the most controversial bills. The real fight is over the amendments. And neither the House and Senate rules nor the law the House and Gov. Nikki Haley are demanding will require recorded votes on amendments or, for that matter, on the procedural motions that more often kill a bill than the up-or-down vote that now must be recorded if it ever occurs.

To understand why, come with me back to 2008, and the genesis of the recorded-voting movement. Somewhere between the time a panel of experts put together a tediously complicated plan to stabilize the over-extended State Retirement System and the time legislative leaders introduced it as a bill, a tiny little section was inserted that gave retired legislators a 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment. Bird-dogging the legislature’s periodic attempts to sweeten up its obscenely generous pension plan is one of my hobbies, and even many experts were unaware of this attempt until I spotted it.

When the bill came to a vote in the House, no one mentioned this provision, and House members either had not read my column or else thought no one else had. So they passed their little perk, on a voice vote.

But voters read my columns, outrage mounted, and some House members embarked upon a set of dizzying motions to try to un-pass the perk. Amazingly, no one requested a roll-call vote on half of those motions. Not so amazingly, efforts to strip out the perk failed when voice votes were taken, but succeeded when recorded votes were taken. After no small amount of petulance (legislative leaders at one point threatened to kill the entire retirement system bill if they couldn’t get their extra perk), the legislature finally stripped out their perk and passed the larger bill. This situation was what launched then-Rep. Haley’s recorded-voting crusade.

Under the rule adopted last week by the Senate, under the House’s Haley rule and the legislation the House passed last week, we would be assured of having a recorded vote on the overall bill to stabilize the retirement system. We would not be any more assured today than we were in 2008 of having a recorded vote on efforts to strip out the legislative perk. And frankly, I’m just as interested in knowing whether my legislator voted to remove that perk as how he voted on the final version of the bill.

The legitimate problem is that there easily can be hundreds of motions in a single day; requiring a roll-call vote on every motion would make it impossible for the legislature to get its work done. If you don’t trust me on this, trust Gov. Haley, who never has proposed requiring a recorded vote on every amendment, much less every motion. The solution Haley and legislative leaders and tea partiers have hit on is to simply not worry about the amendments.

If the only alternative were gumming up the legislative process with endless roll-call votes, I would agree. But it’s not. As I have written (first as a dare, later in all seriousness), and as Senate leaders proposed last year, the House and Senate could adopt rules stating that legislators who do not put a statement in the House and Senate journals to the contrary are considered to have voted on the prevailing side on all voice votes. As convoluted as this sounds, the practical effect would be that legislators would demand recorded votes on everything that needs a recorded vote – and they know perfectly well which votes these are.

Senate Rules Chairman Larry Martin told me last week that he backed away from that approach because he realized it would be impossible for all legislators to keep up with every motion. Perhaps. But legislators were forced to adopt the recorded-vote-on-every-bill rule because they didn’t use the rules they had to demand the recorded votes they should have. Unless they do a better job recording their votes on amendments and motions, they will look back and bemoan the fact that they did not adopt the Scoppe Solution, because angry voters, feeling double-crossed, one day will force those who survive to adopt the draconian alternative.

 

This will result in a tremendous amount of wasted time, because most bills are necessary but boring measures that no one in the world would ever object to. But it’s progress because, contrary to the assertions during last week’s Senate debate, legislators do pass controversial bills by voice vote. Although House and Senate rules allow 10 representatives or three senators to demand roll-call votes, lawmakers often don’t when they should. And although some critics object to adding these requirements only to the House and Senate’s internal rules, rather than in a state law of questionable enforceability, both bodies have a better track record at obeying their own rules than at obeying state laws or the state constitution.

But there’s a legitimate reason legislators haven’t always demanded recorded votes: The question of whether a bill passes is rarely in doubt, which is why everybody joins hands, sings “Kumbayah” and votes “aye” on final passage of the most controversial bills. The real fight is over the amendments. And neither the House and Senate rules nor the law the House and Gov. Nikki Haley are demanding will require recorded votes on amendments or, for that matter, on the procedural motions that more often kill a bill than the up-or-down vote that now must be recorded if it ever occurs.

To understand why, come with me back to 2008, and the genesis of the recorded-voting movement. Somewhere between the time a panel of experts put together a tediously complicated plan to stabilize the over-extended State Retirement System and the time legislative leaders introduced it as a bill, a tiny little section was inserted that gave retired legislators a 2 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment. Bird-dogging the legislature’s periodic attempts to sweeten up its obscenely generous pension plan is one of my hobbies, and even many experts were unaware of this attempt until I spotted it.

When the bill came to a vote in the House, no one mentioned this provision, and House members either had not read my column or else thought no one else had. So they passed their little perk, on a voice vote.

But voters read my columns, outrage mounted, and some House members embarked upon a set of dizzying motions to try to un-pass the perk. Amazingly, no one requested a roll-call vote on half of those motions. Not so amazingly, efforts to strip out the perk failed when voice votes were taken, but succeeded when recorded votes were taken. After no small amount of petulance (legislative leaders at one point threatened to kill the entire retirement system bill if they couldn’t get their extra perk), the legislature finally stripped out their perk and passed the larger bill. This situation was what launched then-Rep. Haley’s recorded-voting crusade.

Under the rule adopted last week by the Senate, under the House’s Haley rule and the legislation the House passed last week, we would be assured of having a recorded vote on the overall bill to stabilize the retirement system. We would not be any more assured today than we were in 2008 of having a recorded vote on efforts to strip out the legislative perk. And frankly, I’m just as interested in knowing whether my legislator voted to remove that perk as how he voted on the final version of the bill.

The legitimate problem is that there easily can be hundreds of motions in a single day; requiring a roll-call vote on every motion would make it impossible for the legislature to get its work done. If you don’t trust me on this, trust Gov. Haley, who never has proposed requiring a recorded vote on every amendment, much less every motion. The solution Haley and legislative leaders and tea partiers have hit on is to simply not worry about the amendments.

If the only alternative were gumming up the legislative process with endless roll-call votes, I would agree. But it’s not. As I have written (first as a dare, later in all seriousness), and as Senate leaders proposed last year, the House and Senate could adopt rules stating that legislators who do not put a statement in the House and Senate journals to the contrary are considered to have voted on the prevailing side on all voice votes. As convoluted as this sounds, the practical effect would be that legislators would demand recorded votes on everything that needs a recorded vote – and they know perfectly well which votes these are.

Senate Rules Chairman Larry Martin told me last week that he backed away from that approach because he realized it would be impossible for all legislators to keep up with every motion. Perhaps. But legislators were forced to adopt the recorded-vote-on-every-bill rule because they didn’t use the rules they had to demand the recorded votes they should have. Unless they do a better job recording their votes on amendments and motions, they will look back and bemoan the fact that they did not adopt the Scoppe Solution, because angry voters, feeling double-crossed, one day will force those who survive to adopt the draconian alternative.