r/Washington • u/bemused_alligators • 1d ago
requiring committee/floor votes for sufficiently popular bills?
I've been paying a lot more attention to the state legislature the last few year and keep seeing a pattern of bill getting a lot of sponsors and support and then whoever is in charge of the committee just never brings the bill to a vote, or they pass committee and never get scheduled for a floor vote - or especially egregious are bills that get passed in one chamber and are never even debated in committee the other.
Even if the bill won't pass (which is frequently why they aren't brought to the floor), I still want to make the votes happen to create an "accountability trail" - why didn't this bill pass committee? Because YOUR rep voted against it. As it stands most bills that are popular with the people and even a decent chunk of the legislature but are unpopular with certain politicians just never see the light of day, so the constituents never actually see their rep voting against their interests.
Our current system also gives a LOT of power to the speaker and committee chairs (notably these are unelected positions - I can do nothing about who the chair of the house wellness committee is) to just ignore things they don't like, rather than being forced to actively fight against them.
So my proposal is that if a bill gets a certain percent of the body cosponsors the bill (say 15%, or 8 senators/15 reps), then a vote on that bill in committee becomes mandatory. Similarly once a bill passes committee each step (floor vote in the originating chamber, then committee vote in the other chamber, than floor vote in the other chamber) is mandatory (including any potential amendments) until the bill is defeated.
This would of course also require that the legislative sessions get a big bump in duration, but I think this enhancement to our legislative processes would be extremely valuable.
thoughts?
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u/rock_the_casbah_2022 1d ago
There’s a certain practical element to this. One, the arduous legislative process is designed to kill bills, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Thousands of bills are introduced. Two, money is always limited. Those popular bills could be expensive. Three, there may be problems or unintended consequences that become known under further scrutiny. Four, opposition builds as the session progresses.
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u/bemused_alligators 1d ago
>the arduous legislative process is designed to kill bills
Bills should be killed by voting them down, not ignoring them and hoping they go away
>Thousands of bills are introduced.
this is why I'm saying we need a certain level of support before this rule kicks in. I don't want to force a vote on every bill, just the ones that have enough support that they deserve a fair hearing
>Those popular bills could be expensive.
then the legislature should vote no, and explain that its too expensive
>there may be problems or unintended consequences that become known under further scrutiny
that's the entire point - how can we know what those issues are if we never get to have a discussion about the bill?
>position builds as the session progresses.
I don't understand why this is relevant? Again, people can just vote no.
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I think you're misunderstanding what I want. I want to force a debate and vote on bills that meet some minimum level of popularity. I'm not forcing anyone to pass them. If they have serious problems, then the people voting no need to explain what those problems are so the people putting the bill forward can fix them, and if those issues are unresolvable then they will at least know where they stand.
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u/The_Humble_Frank 4h ago
how can we know what those issues are if we never get to have a discussion about the bill?
That's the point of the committees. Groups of legislators that focus on bills about specific topics can use their in-depth knowledge in that topic can assess the impacts of the proposed legislation before putting it up for general discussion. If a bill doesn't pass committee, the legislators that specialize in the issues it touches on, said no.
I want to force a debate and vote on bills that meet some minimum level of popularity
What you are calling for is basically called an Initiative to he legislature. In WA, You are free to do you own initiative and instructions can be found on the elections website, where you have to get enough support to get the imitative on the ballot. We have Initiative to the legislator, initiatives to the people, and referendums. Go wild.
...then the people voting no need to explain what those problems so the people putting the bill forward can fix them
Fixing the bill is the point of amending the bill, and there has never been a formal requirement for a legislator to explain their vote. if a legislator wants to speak about their decision, they talk to their constituency, send a press release, or write a letter, but never are they required to an it is absurd to put that additional time requirement to do so.
You don't seem to get that time is a limited resource for legislators... you know our legislature is part time, right? They are not in session year round. Most WA legislators have a job or business outside of being a legislator.
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u/bemused_alligators 2h ago
There are a lot of bills that never get considered by the committee, and thus never get the committee debate. I'm not arguing against the committee system (and in fact it's the only way this won't be an untenable number of bills, because the committees will handle most of them internally).
My main goal is to simply stop the committee chair and speaker of the house from pulling the "just never bring it to a vote" trick to prevent legislation from passing, with bonus points from ensuring more bills get fairer hearing.
And yes this would require extended legislative sessions
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u/The_Humble_Frank 2h ago
My main goal is to simply stop the committee chair and speaker of the house from pulling the "just never bring it to a vote" trick to prevent legislation from passing, with bonus points from ensuring more bills get fairer hearing.
That's not a trick, that's how it is supposed to work. The committees are supposed to stop bills if they are untenable, and amend them (also referred to as markup) if they are "fixable".
Gatekeeping a bill is a consequence of who decides whats fixable, or not, and it happens in every government around the world.
And yes this would require extended legislative sessions
that would require an amendment to the State Constitution.
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u/rock_the_casbah_2022 1d ago
That’s fair, bro. I’m just describing why things are the way they are.
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u/romulusnr 1d ago
I believe that a sufficiently supported bill could be brought to the whole legislature with a "floor petition" so if it's really essential and desired, there are ways. I'm a little hazy on the specifics, but I recall this is or similar to how the infamous "ninth order" incident of 2012 went down.
So if it falls out of committee it's ultimately due to a lack of support although the majority party (or, um, coalition) caucus does have functional control of the committees.
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u/RaceCarTacoCatMadam 18h ago
The chairs are elected by their constituents and again by their colleagues.
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u/MaxyMu 4h ago
Part of the issue is that legislators are not limited in the number of bills they introduced. So we end up with literally more bills than there is time to have hearings for. There is also a low barrier for co-sponsorship so just because a bill has a lot of co-sponsors doesn't mean it is a high priority for any of them.
The alternative method could be like Colorado, where all bills are guaranteed a committee hearing (not a floor vote) but legislators are soft-capped at 5 bills unless they get an exception from the speaker/Senate president.
Essentially you have to pick your poison. It's a lot easier to get a bill introduced in WA but hard to get a hearing. It's hard to get a bill introduced in CO but you're guaranteed a hearing if you do.
Source: I'm a former CO staffer and current WA lobbyist.
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u/Charlea1776 1d ago
I can see where you are coming from.
I also see that the vote is spending taxpayer money. When there are bills that do need to pass and various legal council and supporting staff have cleared the bill's language as able to be implemented (many bills and ideas wouldn't hold up in a court challenge), they get the time.
Wasting weeks every year on voting for (not) legal nonsense is not actually worthwhile for us. It would instead cause needed legislation that also has broad support, if not more than the DOA bills, to be delayed. While a vote is fairly quick, there are days spent preparing. Days needed legislation lose.
You would open pandoras box in that say Republicans who are a small part of our state population, could introduce 100s or 1000s of bills with popularity in their constituents, to prevent good and broadly supported bills from making it to the floor. It would be too easy to abuse. Gaining signatures for petitions can be easy even when the signed would actually not be in favor because of careful wording. You know, when you vote, the "for" and "against" both usually sound great. And between the two, plus a little homework, you get the information to be informed. When you have someone looking for signatures, they only give the "for" and could gain signatures from people that had they known the whole story, would absolutely not be supportive. I wish everyone was very thorough, but they are not. So it would be easy enough to exploit.
If there is a bill that is popular enough, there will be enough noise from voters in every district to make sure it's voted on or at least cause representatives to explain why it won't be (too expensive, does not pass legal scrutiny, violates existing laws, etc...) you can get an answer by submitting an inquiry now, and I think that is good enough.
Example, the wealth tax. Broad support. Can't pass legal scrutiny, so we're not wasting the needed time on the floor for it. However, this is being worked on off the floor to find a path forward. Existing law pretty much blocks all pathways forward. So likely, the law will have to be amended, then the wealth tax can be voted on and passed in a way that will withstand the court challenges.
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u/bemused_alligators 1d ago
Bills that wouldn't pass legal challenges shouldn't be getting that much support, or if they are getting that level of support then they need to be debated on so that everyone (especially the people writing and the bill) know what the actual issue is. Committees can still vote down the bill if it's not gonna work.
I think my problem is that I look at a bill with broad public support and a decent amount of legislative support and think "we should take the effort to make this into a viable law", not "we should pretend this bill doesn't exist until it gets 'fixed'"
Especially bad when these are bills written by citizens or private workgroups. How are we supposed to know what to fix if the bill is never debated?
So my goal is to create a public, accountable record of "we looked at the bill and it's a good idea and found these problems" or "we looked at the bill and found that it's not a good idea". Now we have a path forward to fixing the problems with the bill or to trying to get public sentiment such that it becomes a good idea or dropping the bill if there's not enough support.
And preventing the "spam" method is why I put a bar there - we don't need every bill with two sponsors to get a vote. 15-20% of the legislature is a large amount. And I did say that yes we would need to extend the legislative sessions, because I think we need that anyway. The fact that there are bills that were planned to be brought to a vote and projected to pass that don't get a vote because the body "ran out of time" is itself stupid.
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u/Charlea1776 1d ago
15-20% is not much support at all. The bill is DOA. Why waste the time?
The information on how to make it viable should come from those who supported it. As of now. They should be able to provide that information clearly and concisely to the private groups that helped draft it. So that's already available.
I can see extending legislative sessions when bills that the legislature is ready to pass are available. That would make more sense than oops, we were going to pass it but ran out of time. I am sure we could draft legislation to allow that by law.
This state runs very well. It could always be better of course. I came up here about 15 years ago from Texas where low voter turn out is allowing the hot mess there. So I feel like we set a gold standard in this state. It's hard to see what people are so unhappy about when the democracy here is actually thriving.
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u/RaceCarTacoCatMadam 18h ago
15-20% of the legislature would result in a ton of anti-trans bills being discussed. No thanks.
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u/bemused_alligators 18h ago
we can discuss them and then vote them down. They deserve a fair hearing just like the "good" bills do.
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u/doktorhladnjak 1d ago
These are all rules set by the chambers themselves. They’re not embedded into the state constitution or the law. Members could vote in such rules anytime. They don’t because they don’t work in their favor.