Director's Report

January 11, 2007

House Rules Committee
eyes recording votes

Change applies to votes on changes in spending

The House Rules Committee Thursday told a Powell legislator to bring to the House floor his proposal to start recording votes on measures that raise or cut state spending.

The step would open more of the Legislature’s work to the public and hold legislators accountable for more of the votes they cast.

In a Thursday morning meeting, Rep. Alan C. Jones, R- Powell, HD 25, asked the Rules Committee to change the House rules to require recording the “ayes and noes” on amendments to the biennial budget bill. Jones noted that under current rules, the public sees only how a representative votes on the final budget bill but never knows how any legislator votes on the dozens of budget amendments proposed in the House.

As a result, last year there were no roll call votes on amendments to the budget bill that exempted grocery purchases from the sales tax and appropriations to the Wildlife Trust Fund, two of the biggest issues of the last session.

Jones noted the Wyoming Senate already operates under a rule that requires a roll call vote on any amendment that directly increases or decreases state spending by a specific amount.

A “straw poll” of the committee members showed a strong majority wanted to consider adopting the Senate rule. Speaker Roy Cohee, who serves as chairman of the rules committee, said directed Jones to prepare an amendment to House rules that simply mirrors the Senate rule. It will be considered Monday, Cohee said.

The committee deserves a public thanks for its decision to push for a rule that applies more broadly than Jones’ initial request, which simply applied to amendments to the budget bill. The Legislature’s long-held tradition of recording only a few of its many votes gives citizens few opportunities to track their legislators’ performance. (The ESPC believes all votes should be recorded.)

The ultimate decision on the rule change is unclear, particularly with so many new members serving in the new Legislature. House Majority Floor Leader Colin Simpson expressed concern about the amount of time it will take to conduct the roll call votes on amendments. The House does the counts manually and it takes between five and six minutes to poll all 60 members. Simpson said recording the votes on budget bill amendments could add five hours to Second Reading of the biennial budget bill.

But the ESPC believes that is a problem easily solved by recording votes electronically. The Legislature’s own research shows that other state legislatures that record votes electronically conduct roll call votes in about a minute. – not much more time than it now takes to conduct a voice vote and certainly less time than it takes for members to stand to be counted when someone calls for “division” on a close voice vote.

Recording legislative votes is key to legislative accountability. Please urge friends and neighbors to contact House members in the next few days and ask them to support adoption of the rules change when it is considered Monday.

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Here is the citation from the Senate Rules that requires recording votes on amendments that affect state spending:

Rules of the Senate

CALL FOR THE AYES AND NOES

14-3 (b) Except as provided by Senate Rule 11-5(a), the ayes and noes shall be taken on the motion to adopt any amendment which directly increases or decreases an appropriation by a specific dollar amount.

NEWS from the ESPC_HouseRules_1_11_07