IT’S ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULT to find out how House lawmakers vote on bills in committee, but under a set of rules scheduled for debate Wednesday it could become nearly impossible.
The House rules proposal, put forward by Rep. William Galvin of Canton, the chair of the Rules Committee, would not identify by name how individual members vote on committee bills. Instead, aggregate totals would be provided showing how many committee members voted for or against a bill or chose not to vote. In other words, votes on bills in committee would be anonymous.
The legislative proposal is more sweeping than what was presented in a House rules report issued just last week by Galvin and Rep. Sarah Peake of Provincetown. Galvin and Peake recommended what they called a balanced and nuanced approach to disclosing how members vote on committee bills – identifying by name only those who vote against a bill and tallying aggregate numbers for those voting yes or choosing not to vote.
“A committee vote is reflective of a specific proposal at a moment in time during the committee process and policy-development stage of legislation,” the two lawmakers wrote in their report. “Support or opposition can and should change as the legislation is refined through the committee process and as members learn more about any given topic from colleagues, experts, and the public.”
The House rules would apply to only House committees. Joint rules, which apply to joint committees of the House and Senate, have been stuck in a conference committee made up of members of both branches for months. The two branches are split on making votes public, with the Senate favoring identifying how lawmakers vote on committee bills, while the House favors more limited disclosure.
Sen. Becca Rausch of Needham said in an op-ed published last year that greater disclosure is the right approach. “Committee votes matter; they dictate or influence the outcome of pending legislation, and frequently the committee vote is the only vote that will happen on a particular bill,” she said.
Reps. Erika Uyterhoeven of Somerville and Mike Connolly of Cambridge are pushing the same approach in the House. They have filed an amendment to the proposed House rules requiring all votes in committee to be treated like roll call votes on the House floor – meaning how each member voted would be publicly disclosed.
Uyterhoeven’s push for similar language in the joint rules was unsuccessful. At the time, she appealed to the House for more openness. “The opaque and cumbersome system begs the question, what do we have to hide, what do we have to lose, why do we resist making such simple changes, and, more importantly, why shouldn’t we hold ourselves to the highest standard?” Uyterhoeven asked.