Legislature expands recorded votes

[NoPasaran]

The House and the Senate adopted rules Thursday afternoon to make it easier for the public to find out how lawmakers voted on key issues, though not as easy as some critics would have liked.

The House also approved a measure that will allow its members to investigate local officials suspected of wrongdoing. Some Democrats fear that the rule was designed to target Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

Under the new rules, House voting information should be more accessible on the state's Web site (www.capitol. state.tx.us). The state puts all recorded votes on the site, but it's difficult to find the information, lawmakers said.

-snip-

In the Senate, voice votes on nonprocedural matters, including amendments to bills, will be recorded in the Senate journal. It will not list the names of senators who voted yea, but will list those who voted nay, registered "present not voting" or were absent.

-more-

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared/tx/legislature/stories/01/14lege.html

[sonias]

1. Yes I saw that this morning

Pretty good start on the Senate side. The Craddick weasel of the House claims they already have recorded votes if only a single member calls for it, but I've heard they have always used the 3 member rule. Also note how Terry Keel says that Ronnie Earle supports his bill on investigating local officials.

"Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, who drafted the rules, said Earle had been his mentor and that he would never go after Earle. "I discussed this change with Ronnie Earle, and he has in fact applauded the change," Keel said."

I think Linda Camin is right about the constitutional amendment on recorded votes. Make them permanent.

(snip)
Linda Camin, chair of the recorded votes committee of the League of Women Voters of Texas. "But these rules changes only work for this session. This does not mean that we don't still need a bill for a constitutional amendment, because that's the only way it's going to be a permanent practice."
(/snip)

Sonia

[NoPasaran]

2. Interestingly, Kronberg thinks it's a bad idea

writing in part
Along with some friends, we developed a methodology that said any bill with more than 50% Democratic support was a Democratic bill. Any bill with more than 50% Republican support was a Republican bill. We then took all the record votes on these bills and used them to rank liberal to conservative legislators.

We properly called the publication The Partisan Rankings and marketed it with some success.

However, we never duplicated the effort because it was a distorted view of reality. For instance, our methodology "proved" that pro-business conservative Democrat Parker McCullough from Georgetown was actually more liberal than Glenn Maxey of Austin. On its face, that was preposterous.

But what will happen is that the political consultants and purge driven extremists on both sides will use the wealth of the irrelevant information to determine how often legislators drift from their party caucus fold. Frankly, it will probably have the end result of turning the Legislature into a caricature and further undermining public confidence.
http://www.quorumreport.com/

[sonias]

3. Well just ranking a bill with 50% Dem support is preposterous

Everyone knows Southern Democrats can't be categorized as Democrats all of the time, and Ken Armbrister from Victoria is a perfect example. He's pretty close to a closet Republican. The real rankings are done by groups. Groups like the League of Conservation Voters, NAACP, ACLU, NOW etc. These groups have specific bills that the look at. They track those bills and votes and rank the Ds and Rs based on those issues. This is the real power of recorded votes. A Representative or Senator that is strong on civil rights and voters rights is going to vote for those things and their ratings by the NAACP and ACLU is going to reflect that. Just having the majority of the party support a bill means nothing these days. I want to see their records on how they vote on consumer issues and protecting us against corporations.

Sonia