01/17/13: Limiting citizen involvement

This op-ed appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on the date shown.

AT 8 A.M. Monday, a subcommittee of seven legislators met to decide the fate of 10 bills. Reports say the room was packed, verified by the few pictures that emerged, despite that notice of which legislation was going to be reviewed wasn’t announced until late Friday afternoon.

Every bill failed. Because it combined several bills into one, the subcommittee ended up voting on only three bills. Two of the votes were recorded, meaning that we know how each legislator voted. One was killed on an unrecorded voice vote.

At 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, another subcommittee met, this time composed of six legislators. On the docket were 16 bills. Notice of the hearing had been given the previous afternoon.

Ten of the bills were heard. After combining several bills, the committee ended up voting on five. Two were approved by the committee on a recorded vote; three were killed on unrecorded voice votes.

Is this the way to run a government?

The Virginia General Assembly claims to be the “oldest continuous lawmaking body in the New World,” based on the establishment of the House of Burgesses in 1619. Bound to the traditions of the past, it has often been slow to change, both in terms of its processes and its decisions. It is why we are alone in the country with a single-term governor. It is why we have a transportation mess.

And it is why we have early-morning subcommittee meetings with little notice, without the benefit of any kind of broadcasting, with decisions made in unrecorded voice votes.

This is the first full week of the legislative session. Legislators are still filing bills — all bills and joint resolutions are due to the clerk by 3 p.m. Friday. Many of the citizen groups that follow legislation affecting them are working overtime to keep up with the filings and to notify their members or supporters about them.

What better way to limit citizen engagement than to schedule votes early in the process?

I doubt this is the infamous “Virginia way” that Gov. Bob McDonnell had in mind when he made his State of the Commonwealth address a week ago.

In his speech, McDonnell took up the fight for restoration of voting rights for convicted felons, a cause long championed by the late Sen. Yvonne Miller. One might think that the weight of the governor — we are told, after all, that the strength of the governor’s office is why he must be limited to one term — might have influenced the legislature to give more consideration to an issue that had been summarily dismissed in the past.

So much for the weight of the governor. As a former member of the legislature, he undoubtedly knew exactly what was going to happen when he saw the subcommittee docket. His support — and that of the attorney general — was insufficient at the Monday hearing, resulting in his legislation suffering the same fate that Miller’s had for so many years.

Lacking such a weighty patron, it is not a surprise that most of the efforts to expand Virginia’s absentee voting law were killed at Tuesday’s meeting. Only a bill to add those 65 or older to the list of those eligible to vote absentee made it out of the subcommittee.

It would be easy to lay the blame for these failures at the feet of the Republican majority in the House of Delegates, but that would be missing the real issue: the old way of thinking versus the new way. The governor’s voting rights bill was introduced by a Republican. A no-excuse absentee voting bill was introduced by a Republican.

Blowback from Monday’s — and, to a lesser extent, Tuesday’s — decisions came from all corners, with some of the strongest statements from Republicans.

No, the problem is the old-school leadership in the House of Delegates, the ones who decide which bills are heard by which committees and subcommittees, the ones who set the calendar with early-morning hearings, the ones who refuse to record or broadcast subcommittee meetings and allow unaccountable, unrecorded voice votes.

Sunlight remains the best disinfectant. We should not have to rely on Twitter and Facebook to know what’s going on in our government.

If these representatives are unwilling to be accountable to those for whom they work, we can replace them in November with those who will.