Thursday, Jun. 18, 2009

Scoppe: In a parallel universe, I oppose transparency and accountability

I SPENT last week in the Appalachian Mountains on my church’s annual mission work trip. Though I can’t take much credit, our group helped a lot of people who needed help, and we were blessed ourselves by the experience. But even in my second year, I still found it a bit disorienting to try to be productive for an entire week at tasks on which I have no expertise. If there’s anything I know less about than putting a new roof on a house (or doing any sort of home repair, for that matter), it’s chaperoning a bunch of teen-agers.

So I was looking forward to getting back to work on Monday, to things I knew and understood. Instead, as I plowed through a week’s worth of e-mail, I began to feel as though I had stepped into a parallel universe.

I also began to understand why elected officials ignore those orchestrated campaigns in which people who have no idea what they’re talking about send e-mails regurgitating the catch phrases they were instructed to use.

The source of my disorientation was a column I had left to run in my absence, decrying the failure of the Legislature’s new transparency rules to produce the explosion of recorded voting that supporters assured us it would.

I concluded the column by reviving a proposal I had offered up last year, almost tongue-in-cheek, to require that whenever there’s not a roll-call vote, everyone who does not notify the clerk otherwise would be officially recorded as voting on the prevailing side. I suggested that since the rules that my new transparency allies had praised earlier this year didn’t accomplish much, perhaps we should try out that idea.

Now, there are few people in this state who can match my record as an advocate for transparency and accountability throughout government — of which recorded voting is an essential component. But looking at my inbox, you’d think I had suggested eliminating the right to vote. Subject lines screamed “Your proposal to afford the SC Representatives deniability about their voting” and “Do not deny our right to know how Columbia votes!” (a favorite phrase) and “Why Won’t You Allow Us To See How They Vote?” Writers charged that I was “obviously part of the problem and do not want solutions” and counseled that I “need to examine your position as well as your motive.” (A few of the less bizarre responses are printed on this page.)

By mid-afternoon, I was seriously questioning whether I had inserted an extra “not” or jumbled key sentences in my column. I read it again; I had not.

Rather, it was an example of that Internet Age phenomenon of people too easily believing everything they read. A blast e-mail from Talbert J. Black Jr. calling people to arms did include a link to my column, but most people who answered the call clearly had not read it; they merely got outraged by his description of my final two paragraphs and pasted his talking points into letters.

When we corresponded, it quickly became clear that Mr. Black thought I wanted to eliminate the roll-call votes we have today. I do not. I want to find a workable way to give us more.

What also became clear, as I corresponded with others, was that people who haven’t spent 20 years around this Legislature have serious misconceptions of how things work at the State House and what has and hasn’t been proposed and very different expectations than I do about how various proposals would play out.

The first misconception is that every vote is vitally important. It simply is not. There is nothing controversial about the vast majority of bills the Legislature passes: They clarify or update confusing language, grant authority to an agency that everyone thought it already had, make technical changes that literally everybody who could possibly care agrees to. To set aside the minimum three minutes it would take for every legislator to vote on each of these measures would be a grand waste of time.

Worse, the vote-on-everything idea would hand a tool to obstructionists. Ten representatives or five senators already can demand a roll-call vote on any motion. And on hotly contested bills, one side often does just that, in hopes of wearing down the other side. I’ve seen recorded votes on motions to table motions to recede for lunch. It’s easy to have a half-dozen recorded votes regarding a single amendment. But because this is so disruptive, there is tremendous pressure on legislators to use the tactic only on the most important (at least to them) bills. A record-every-vote rule would eliminate that pressure, creating gridlock.

But there’s a widespread belief that we shouldn’t worry about clogging up the legislative process, because lawmakers would compensate by eliminating congratulatory resolutions and self-serving speechifying and other frivolities. Oh how I wish that were true. Unfortunately, all evidence points in the other direction: Just as the Legislature is unwilling to prioritize and make the really tough choices when money gets tight, it won’t prioritize its work, either. It simply won’t do the important stuff.

Another misconception is that there’s a serious effort, led by gubernatorial contender Rep. Nikki Haley, to require a recorded vote on every single motion. That isn’t true either. Her bill, which has generated a cult following of people who obviously haven’t read it, exempts procedural motions, which almost always determine whether a controversial bill passes, along with nearly all amendments, which often determine whether the bill is worth passing.

The fact is that nearly everyone with any experience around the Legislature — and this includes its harshest critics — agrees that a line must be drawn.

That brings me to my proposal to let the line essentially draw itself, with a rule that says whenever there’s not a roll-call vote, everyone is recorded as voting on the prevailing side unless they notify the clerk otherwise.

The record-every-vote advocates believe legislators would lie to constituents who disliked their official vote, telling them they forgot to notify the clerk. I believe lawmakers would be afraid to risk that and instead would quickly find this such a hassle that they’d call for recorded votes on everything that anyone could possibly care about. And believe me, they know which votes those are.

It’s certainly not a perfect plan, and I continue to urge people to come up with a better one. So far, I haven’t heard one.

In a parallel universe, of course, we wouldn’t need any of these rules, because legislators would use their good sense and integrity to call for those recorded votes that need to be called for. But, I didn’t actually return to that alternate universe Monday — something that became apparent once I got back to doing something I do have some experience at: asking people what they really mean when they say bizarre things, and then paying careful attention to their answers.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.

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