Fresh Eyes on How The Heck Does Anyone Understand A Calendar Around Here??
It was manageable back in, oh, say, February, when all I had to do to track a bill I was following was simply check a calendar. "Oh look, it's one of 5 items on the agenda in Committee X," or "It's right there in black and white on Tuesday's Daily House Calendar! How very predictable!"
Not so by April. This month, I'm spending every waking moment of my life just trying to figure out when bills will be laid out, left pending, voted out, sent to conference, amended, tabled, passed... and it's making me insane. My biggest complaints, after the jump:
1) The House is supposed to be the nutty, unpredictable chamber -- not the trusty, responsible Senate. But the Senate's calendar system is so much more confusing than the House's (which generally runs in order). Unless you're BFFs with Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, (or you have ESP, a skill my Austin bureau colleagues seem to have been born with) how do you ever know when a bill is going to come up? How does Dewhurst decide which bill to take up, and when? Does he organize them around his bathroom breaks? ("Hmm, I really shouldn't take up TYC right now, because I had four cups of coffee this morning, and this could run long!") Likewise, if I'm a lawmaker born without a sixth sense, how do I know when to take my own bathroom break? What happens if he calls up my bill while I'm powdering my nose?
2) The committee calendars are just as annoying. Because you'll sit through an endless meeting, only to have the bill you're interested be left pending at, oh, 4 a.m. Not only have you wasted your entire night, you've got to figure out JUST WHEN that pending bill is going to be voted out of the committee. And the pending bills aren't ever printed on the committee calendars, meaning you've got to make sure you know exactly when that next meeting is (probably scheduled "upon adjournment" with the 50 other committees you're supposed to be monitoring that night) so you don't miss it when your bill FINALLY moves. Either that or you have to call 17 committee clerks or policy advisors or bored college interns -- who "uh-huh" so loud you can just hear them tearing up your phone number -- to find out what the deal is.
Now multiply this hassle by, oh, dozens of bills with complicated 3- and 4-digit numbers, some with SBs, some with HBs, some with HJRs and SJRs, and you've got yourself a veritable mess.
Bottom line is this: If it's this complicated for someone who's been paying attention for four months, imagine what it's like for the average constituent with a vested interest in one of these bills. If this is open government, if this is all-access democracy, I must've been asleep in high school civics.
Comments
Some from Dewhurst's office will give a heads up to the member's office on which bills he/she will likely be recognized on the floor that day ... then they're given an additional heads up when their bill's about to come up.
Posted by: Fine Bottled Water | April 20, 2007 7:31 PM
Ms. Ramshaw--
First off, rarely is anything uncomplicated worth doing.
Secondly, you're watching dozens of bills that have an impact on the Dallas area. A truly unsophisticated constituent really only cares about a couple. A couple of bills are MUCH easier to follow--especially when you don't have a 6PM deadline to meet every evening.
If you care about more than a few bills--or really need to know the vote on a bill that passed out of committee the night before--I don't think you can be called an unsophisticated constituent, anymore.
Third, you might want to ask the committees you cover what their procedures are. Many committees NEVER vote on a bill the first time it's considered. For what it's worth, I really like this practice--everybody makes better decisions when they've had an opportunity to sleep on them.
Finally, give those committee clerks a break. Remember, they're the ones who are responsible for putting all those bill packets together, keeping track of all those witness cards, attempting to avoid a procedural faux pas that would get the bill killed, and then finally reporting all those bills out so that they can get to the next step. I guess what I'm saying is that, while you're trying to understand what's happening, they--above most others--are trying to make it happen. Forgive them if they don't have time to call you to let you know if a bill passed.
Regardless, both sophisticated and unsophisticated constituents really ought to check out http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/. It's an amazingly powerful legislative research tool unequaled by any other state. It's so powerful that I doubt most people use it to its full effect.
Posted by: Bubba Galt | April 21, 2007 1:18 PM
Oh please. No one's bashing the committee clerks.
Posted by: Brooks | April 22, 2007 11:42 PM