Lawmakers finally took action to reform the Legislature’s joint rules at the beginning of this session, but they didn’t go as far as they could to improve transparency in the legislative process.
For many sessions in a row. Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford) has proposed a flurry of rule changes that would make the legislative process easier to follow for the public at large. His pleas to reform the joint rules had largely fallen on deaf ears until late last session when the outgoing rules committee agreed to consider reforms.
Bennett proposed eliminating what’s known as cloture, the date by which lawmakers must submit bill requests for the coming legislative session, as a means of reducing the number of overall bills submitted as “concept drafts,” in addition to virtually eliminating concept drafts. Lawmakers finally agreed to review the joint rules following media criticism of concept drafts, of which there were a record number submitted by lawmakers during the 131st Legislature.
Concept drafts are vague bills that often only contain a title and a summary of what the bill aims to do. For example, in the past we’ve seen bills like “An Act Related to Water” and the bill text simply states that the bill would amend laws related to water in Maine.
That’s not very descriptive, but water is pretty essential to human life, so naturally the public should be concerned what an “Act Related to Water” actually seeks to accomplish. But upon reviewing the bill, it’s impossible to know how the bill would impact water laws in Maine because the bill doesn’t provide any real legal language. It only contains a vague summary of what the sponsor wishes to accomplish with the bill.
At the public hearing on bills written as concept drafts, the sponsor usually shows up and finally releases to the public the full legal language of their proposal. Unfortunately, this gives the public no opportunity whatsoever to meaningfully testify for or against the proposal, considering they get no time to review and respond to the actual language of the bill before the public hearing.
In effect, concept drafts lock the public out of the legislative process because the public is afforded no real language on which to testify before the hearing. Nobody, whether it’s a concerned citizen, an impacted business, or a representative of a trade group, can testify on a bill for which there’s no real legislative language.
Thus, for a long time now, concept drafts have acted as a nefarious tool for lawmakers to propose controversial ideas while giving the public little to no context of what the bill truly entails. This allows lawmakers to put forward these ideas with minimal (if any) public pushback.
Sen. Bennett pushed for a change to the joint rules that would have almost entirely eliminated concept drafts. Sadly, Democratic leaders of the Legislature rejected that proposal along party lines and instead advanced reforms that still allow concept drafts to exist in the Maine Legislature.
However, the rule now stipulates that a bill written in concept form must provide an internet address at which the full text of the legislation can be viewed. Democratic leaders defended concept drafts as having a place in the Maine Legislature, but it’s hard to see why.
The job of lawmakers is to pass laws. Passing laws requires legal language. No lawmaker should be able to skirt public transparency by proposing vague laws with no legal language.
Sadly, the practice will continue in Maine, though the intent of the new rule is to give the public adequate time to review the legal language of a concept draft in advance of the public hearing.
This is better than how it used to be, and should result in more meaningful testimony from the public on bills submitted as concept drafts, but we’ll have to wait and see what compliance looks like throughout the remainder of session. I have a feeling, considering lawmakers didn’t go as far as they could have, that the rules committee will have to address this issue again in the future.