Legislators urge televised hearing on House rules
9:09 AM Mon, Feb 25, 2008 | Permalink
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House Republicans — and a sympathetic Democrat — are pressing Speaker William Murphy to broadcast the first public hearing on proposed House rules changes on Capitol TV. Dedicated Political Scene readers already know the Republicans are boycotting the taping by Capitol Television of five-minute interviews with legislators, in protest against the hiring of former radio talk-show personality Dave Barber, at $65,000, to conduct the election-year interviews. Their argument: spending that much money to buy “face time” for themselves during a budget crisis is unwarranted, and if the legislature, in fact, has spare cash, it should buy more portable cameras to broadcast more legislative hearings. Currently, only a handful — such as the House Finance Committee’s — are regularly televised. In a recent letter to Murphy, 11 Republican lawmakers and Democrat Al Gemma, of Warwick, went a step further. They said they were “encouraged” that, in the face of opposition, House Democratic leaders had agreed to withdraw a proposal to cut short the amount of time that lawmakers — and the public — get to see the $7-billion state budget the House Finance Committee has produced before it goes to the full House for a vote. In theory, the budget could have emerged for the first time in its final form late on a Friday night and be put to a vote during the next legislative session day. With opposition building to that particular proposal, House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox announced that the leadership would not press ahead with that proposal. But, “due to the very serious questions raised by a number of the [other] changes proposed in H 7372, we hereby request that arrangements be made to ensure that Capitol TV records and broadcasts the House Rules Committee hearings on this subject,” the letter written by Rep. Laurence W. Ehrhardt, R-North Kingstown, and co-signed by the others, said. Through a spokesman Fox said he had not yet decided when to hold the House Rules hearings, or whether to televise them. “After the recess, he said he will have discussions with others involved in the leadership teams of both parties regarding the rules,” House spokesman Larry Berman said late last week. “… If they should decide at that point to have a Rules Committee meeting, they would also discuss the possibility of televising it, but at this point the discussion has not advanced to that stage.” But as critics see it, other remaining proposals could affect how much time they — and others not in sync with the Democratic leadership — have to debate and introduce proposed amendments to the big budget bill after it has left the committee. For example, one of the new rules says: “No matter that has been the subject of a bill, resolution or amendment heard or disposed of in a House committee shall be offered as an amendment to the budget bill.” An unrelated proposal disposes of the current rule limiting to 50 the number of bills the lawmakers can consider on a given day after the big budget bill has moved through the House. Another, less-controversial proposal preserves a requirement that at the point public testimony is being taken, the prime sponsor of any bill or resolution “provide to the committee the name of any individual, group or organization responsible for the substantive basis or text.” In the past, lawmakers were required to identify the person on whose behalf they introduced legislation. In the face of resistance from some lawmakers, this was adopted in recent years as a compromise. 
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