“Noooo!” the vast majority of House State Affairs Committee members shouted for voice votes on two controversial bills aimed at overhauling the state employee retirement system last week.
Despite what sounded like no more than one or two of the 11 members present saying “Yes,” Committee Chairman Hank Zuber, R-Ocean Springs, ruled each time that the yeses had it. The bills were moved forward. He ignored pleas from several members, including his committee Vice Chairman Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, calling for real vote counts.
A similar “vote” transpired in the House Education Committee recently, with members’ pleas to Chairman Rob Roberson, R-Starkville, for a real vote count being ignored on a hot-potato bill and a voice vote sounding uncertain.
This has drawn criticism from some lawmakers and advocates and renewed questions of whether committee hearings and votes are just to rubber stamp what legislation the GOP leadership has decided it wants to move forward.
In recent years, particularly in the House, publicly held committee hearings and votes have become pro forma. Real decisions appear to be hashed out, and straw polled, in closed door Republican Caucus meetings.
And given the GOP holds a supermajority, it’s akin to the House holding secret sessions and votes on legislation.
Also recently, in a lawsuit brought by the Mississippi Free Press over the closed-door caucus meetings, a Hinds County judge ruled the Legislature is not subject to the state’s open meetings law — that the Legislature imposes on other state and local government bodies.
These are ill omens for the public and press and their right to witness what their elected lawmakers are doing, including how they spend billions of tax dollars. It also concentrates legislative power to a very small handful of folks, and it strips rank-and-file lawmakers of input or even the ability to speak out on issues.
Vice Chairman Johnson, who’s also House minority leader, said he believes House rules require chairmen to allow a roll-call or counted vote when requested. But House Speaker Jason White, Zuber and others have argued that’s not the case.
House rules are unclear or conflicting. One passage says the House shall allow “division” or a counted vote if 1/5 of members demand it. Another says committees will follow the rules for the full House, but then goes on to make that sound optional.
Johnson, along with opponents of the PERS changes in the two bills, which included some of the universities’ lobby, were angry and cried foul after the non-vote votes.
“Most committee chairmen have always abided by, if one person wants a roll call, they do it,” Johnson said. “There were only 11 members in the room, and you heard it, several called for a roll call. This is the second time this session this has happened.
“Now you can’t even vote in committee,” Johnson said. “We have not formally addressed this with the speaker yet, but I think we will. We just can’t operate that way.”
Oddly, the two PERS bills that caused the dustup both died — without a vote — after they were forwarded to another committee. Apparently a tentative deal the leadership had on the measures fell through, so the chairman of the second committee let them die with a deadline without calling them up.
WATCH
Quote of the Week
“I want my sweet potato. Everybody got one but me. Somebody stole mine. I want it back.” — Rep. Willie Bailey, D-Greenville, in a committee meeting last week before a vote on a measure to make the sweet potato the official state vegetable. Before an earlier House vote weeks ago, sweet potatoes were placed on lawmakers’ desks.
In Brief
Clark laid in state at Capitol
Robert Clark, elected in 1967 as Mississippi’s first Black lawmaker in the modern era and who rose to the second-highest leadership role in the state House of Representatives, laid in state at the Mississippi Capitol on Sunday.
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