Assembly GOP Has No Need to Fear Openness

Open, transparent government is always — repeat, always — a good thing, no matter who’s trying to pry open the window for the public to peer in.

Take the House of Delegates in the Virginia General Assembly, for example.

In 2006, the Republican-dominated chamber, in a drive to make its committees more efficient, changed the rules to allow subcommittees to kill legislation on unrecorded votes. Prior to 2006, subcommittees didn’t record votes on recommendations to the full panels but they also couldn’t kill legislation outright.

The minority Democrats in the House cried foul and tried to change the rules in 2007 and 2008, failing both times. News organizations across the state also joined the discussion, with the editorial pages of several of the state’s large dailies calling for recorded subcommittee votes as being in the best interests of all Virginians.

Both years, the GOP caucus refused to move to recorded subcommittee votes on motions to kill a bill.

Ostensibly, the reason given was one of pure efficiency; killing bad bills early in the process, at the subcommittee level, allowed the full panels’ more time to devote to studying major legislation. More often than not, though, the process simply the majority Republicans to swiftly kill any and all legislation sponsored by Democrats or by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. It was difficult for anyone to track legislation through the process, and the unrecorded votes often took place late at night or early in the morning, with hardly any fingerprints on the legislative corpses.

With the 2009 session of the Assembly just weeks away from beginning, there’s a move afoot again to have subcommittee votes recorded, but this time there appears to be movement toward reform.

The state chapter of Americans for Prosperity (Web site: www.americansforprosperity.org), a conservative, pro-business organization based in Washington, D.C., has called on the House Republicans to end their practice of operating the government in the dark.

According to Media General News Service, the group’s state director, Ben Marchi, has a petition with the signatures of more than 300 Republicans from across the state calling on the House GOP to change their policy.

“Especially in this information age today,” Marchi said, “there’s no reason why we can’t get this to the public in an efficient manner that doesn’t cost a lot of money.”

Hear, hear.

Del. Samuel Nixon Jr., a Chesterfield County Republican and leader of the House GOP caucus, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he supports recording subcommittee votes and that there is a growing number of delegates who agree with him.

“I think that any time a legislative matter is under consideration by a legislative body, that for reasons of accountability, those votes should be recorded,” Nixon told the Times-Dispatch.

And again … hear, hear.

The last hurdle — and it’s a big one — is Speaker of the House William J. Howell.

Paul Nardo, his chief of staff, tried to spin the matter by pitting the efficiency of government against the openness and transparency of government. “House Republicans, since they came in in 2000, and certainly this speaker, is very interested in making sure the House functions as efficiently and as effectively as possible,” he said. He even went on to claim that recording subcommittee votes would require the hiring of additional staffers, something his own caucus’ chairman disputes.

The speaker’s spokesman has created a false dichotomy, as though efficiency of government precludes the openness of government. He’s wrong.

The most efficient government is the government that operates as transparently as possible. Virginia’s House of Delegates, with the rules currently in place, simply does not operate in the best interest of the commonwealth’s citizens.