http://cjonline.com/...
Excellent article in the Topeka Capital-Journal this morning, written by their education reporter, Celia Llopis-Jepsen. Her article reports that the Kansas Legislature is the only legislature in the country that conducts the bulk of its business via anonymous committee bills. Her research found that "more than 90 percent of bills in the 2015 session didn’t bear the names of anyone involved in authoring or introducing them."
This investigation was a massive undertaking, by all accounts. Ms. Llopis-Jepsen reviewed legislative indexes "dating as far back as the 1920s." This revealed a trend: that Kansas gradually shifted, starting in 1925, "from a state with obvious authorship of most bills to one with increasing anonymity." The trend is startling: "In 1925, 80 percent of bills had the names of lawmakers on them, but 50 years later only half did. By 2005, three-quarters were committee bills. In 2015, 92 percent were."
That's not all. She then contacted the legislatures of EVERY SINGLE STATEHOUSE in the country to find out whether this was normal. It wasn't. Apparently, every other state has some way to determine authorship of a bill. In most states, lawmakers must put their names on bills. Most states never use committee bills, or use them sparingly in special circumstances. Often this information is available online, no more than a few clicks away. Even in Idaho -- the only other state where nearly all bills originate in a committee -- the bill has to contain the name of the sponsor and contact information for the person entity responsible for proffering the bill. When discussing legislative non-transparency, Kansas is unfortunately in a class by itself.
The worst part of this story, though, isn't how bad it makes Kansas look. As a native Kansan, I'm used to that. It's that Democrats and Republicans alike defend this practice.
No one should be surprised to see Republicans defending a practice that reduces government transparency, but frankly, Democrats should be better than this. And to come out against this anonymous bill practice would be good politics AND good governance.
The Democrats' excuses here basically boil down to "Republicans won't vote for any bills, even good ones, that are introduced by Democrats." But there aren't enough Kansas Democrats to pass legislation -- there aren't even enough of them to BLOCK legislation -- and everyone knows that Republicans don't vote for good ideas. (That's their whole schtick, right?) So these excuses not only miss the point, they fail to take advantage of a key differentiator between D's and R's.
In my opinion, the Democrats are missing the opportunity to stand for good, common-sense governance:
(1) Introduce, as a bloc, HR0001 every year, ending the anonymous bill practice. Reintroduce it every year until it passes.
(2) Every bill introduced by a Democrat should have their name on the bill. If Republicans don't follow suit, good. If good ideas go nowhere, good. Campaign on the issue, and beat the Republicans over the head in ads, on TV, and in the print media to highlight their obstruction, poor governance, lack of transparency, and general asshattery at every opportunity.
Of course, the Democrats can't come out against Kansas' current practices without looking like total hypocrites; after all, they use the practice too. I wish the Kansas Dems would never have embraced the practice in the first place, but it's never too early to embrace good governance. Perhaps, if they can make good governance an issue, and take the lead on it, there's a small chance Kansans will give them a chance to lead on more issues. Kansas has a history of embracing progressive ideas and common-sense reforms, and will do so again. Given their minority status at present, what do Kansas Dems have have to lose?