On July 18, the Maine Joint Rules Committee met to discuss how vague our state’s bill drafts can be. Unlike many other states, Maine allows legislators to submit what is known as a “concept draft,” which, instead of having an actual bill body, only includes a basic description of the bill’s subject matter. The reason concept drafts have become increasingly common is that our state requires legislators to submit bills weeks in advance of the first legislative session – a deadline known as “cloture.”
Because rules like cloture exist, legislators, many of whom have little to no experience in government, avoid the cloture requirement by submitting vague “concept drafts” and amending the draft into a functional bill later. The real substance of these bills are often published only days or even hours before a bill’s public hearing, which means the public cannot meaningfully testify on what the bill actually entails. Removing the ability to submit concept drafts and making the cloture date later would fix this problem, as well as many others, and allow legislators to submit bills after the session has begun.
Maine Policy Institute research has found that during the 131st Maine Legislature, around 11% of submitted bills were concept drafts. When navigating through the legislature’s website, all someone could read about each concept draft was a vague statement, such as the bill “proposes to make necessary changes to state law” or that it “would enact provisions of law regarding health care in the State.” Can anyone honestly say whether they support either of these bills? How would one testify for or against them, or even know whether they should testify? The obvious answer is that you can’t.
Maine government is structured so that our legislators are ordinary citizens of the state, meaning they may need more time and practice to nail down specifics for bills. However, the goal of having a citizen legislature is to bring the ordinary people to the government. However, combining this idea with concept drafts results in the exact opposite. The general public cannot testify on a bill they can’t read, which is exactly what a concept draft is. Removing the ability to submit bills as concept drafts will encourage transparency in government and allow the public to provide testimony on a more significant number of issues.
That is partly what the Joint Rules Committee met to discuss, and several proposals were before them with slight differences–some removed cloture, some changed it, some kept it the same and only removed concept drafts. The entire legislature is up for reelection in November, so the committee’s decisions will only be official recommendations to whoever is in office next session.
The Rules Committee announced that it intends to make decisions on these issues in August. Since the committee hasn’t met in years, hopefully it will recommend changes to the Joint Rules concerning concept drafts and the next batch of lawmakers will take those recommendations seriously.