Change of Pace, Change of Perception…
During my first four years in Montgomery there was always a commonly held belief that it didn’t really matter what happened in the House of Representatives to most insiders because of the different volume of bills passed as opposed to the Senate. The House has always worked at a break neck pace to pass a lot of bills. Sometimes as many as 25 a day. It was always felt that it did not matter what the House did because the Senate would kill almost any legislation passed by the House due to some procedural debate going on in the Senate. Usually the Senate debate would delay the work of the Senate long enough to prevent very few bills from becoming law in either chamber. This is not really pointing fingers at one side or the other in the State Senate feuds, it is just the nature of the upper chamber and their workings.
Something began to change in this perception over the last couple of years. While the Senate continued to have some issues that slowed their progress the House also began to slow in the number of bills they passed also. What used to be a calendar of 25 bills a day considered by the House has now trickled down to only five or six bills a day. I have discussed the good and bad of this slower process before but what is interesting is the perception created by this slow down. Suddenly there is a bottle neck created by the limited amount of legislation passing. I mean there are roughly 1,600 bills introduced each session and if only 5 bills a day pass over a 30 legislative day session….. well the math shows how little will get passed compared to how much is being pushed. This has led to different strategies for groups or organizations looking to pass bills in the legislature. What used to be a guaranteed success in passing a bill through the House is no longer the case.. This has caused a lot of groups and legislators as well to scale back on their legislative agendas and also focus really hard on passing these few bills at the top of their list.
What does this mean for the legislative process? I am not really sure but as someone who really enjoys keeping up with the process and procedures of the legislature I think the long term impact could be worth watching.
Of course as with everything else in the Alabama Legislature, anything and everything could change tomorrow!
When members of the HOR are confident that a bill won’t be passed by the Senate that creates a circumstance which would allow members, if so inclined, to be two-faced by voting for a bill they feel their constituents would favor, but which they don’t personally want to see enacted into law. The same thing can happen on a vote on a BIR for a bill in either body. I would call such votes “window dressing votes”.
Comment by Don — March 29, 2007 @ 6:30 am
I have heard that same argument and it does have some merit to it. I am sure some people look at a vote and go “well it will never pass the Senate so yeah sure I will vote for it.” I don’t think it is really all that common though. I mean if I really oppose a bill I am sure not going to depend on some other group to kill it for me. Also on that same note if you really wanted to kill a bill in the House you could do that in several different phases of the committee process long before it got to the floor.
There is also a flip side to your argument– I have made several TOUGH votes before that I knew might not be popular but I still thought it was the right thing to do only to have them die in the Senate. So it is a two sided coin. I am sure there are some Senators who feel the same way.
Comment by Rep. Ward — March 29, 2007 @ 7:35 am
Representative Ward, you’re to be commended for voting your convictions even if you think it may lose you some votes. I think most Alabamians might think that you may be in the minority of those in the legislature who votes that way, though. Are we wrong?
Comment by Don — April 1, 2007 @ 7:25 am
Actually this is one of the things I complain about with the media quite a bit. In my honest opinion most legislators do what they think is the right thing. Now I may not agree with some of them philosophicaly but 90% do what they think is right. The problem is like any other group of 140 people you put into a room- you are going to have 3 or 4 bad apples. Unfortunately the media in my opinion focuses all their stories on that 5-10% and everyone believes that the entire legislature is that way. I have found in my personal experience the bad apples are definitely in the minority and not the majority despite the amount sensational news coverage they garner.
Comment by Rep. Cam Ward — April 2, 2007 @ 8:05 am
Representative Ward, thanks for shining your light on this dark issue.
But, whether it’s true or not, I’ve known legislators and former legislators say that the few bad apples you described just also happen to be among the small group of legislators who control the legislative process to a large degree at the behest of certain special interest groups, lobbyists and labor leaders. That’s probably what leads to general public to perceive the situation as it does.
Comment by Don — April 3, 2007 @ 8:35 am