Cross-posted at Public Access to Public Hearings
Yes, we are on the brink of an historic default on our national debt, and yes, it is historically hot out, and yes, there is bad news today in Norway, so yes, there are bigger issues going on in the world than the issue I’m going to raise yet again. But I raise it because it’s so symptomatic of a really out-of-touch political culture in our own back yard. The issue, of course, is whether legislative committees such as the Joint Committee on the Judiciary should have to make public the written testimony submitted to them, and the names of the witnesses who testified before them, at public hearings. Simple, right?
As you may recall, I had made a request for the written testimony and witness list from a hearing the Joint Committee held to consider the Uniform Foreign-Court Money Judgment Recognition Act. I had recounted a conversation I had with a staffer who, as I heard him, said that witnesses had indeed provided prepared remarks, but that the Committee would not provide them. Representative Eugene O’Flaherty, House chairman of the Committee, stating that my report of the situation was “accurate.” Then, in a spirit of bipartisan bonhomie, I reached out to Republicans such as Representative Dan Winslow and party chair Jennifer Nassour, both of whom endorsed my proposal to change the rules and require committees to make such records public. The idea was to try to make the Democratic Party, which, after all, is the party with the power to change the rules if it wants to, uncomfortable at the notion that the Republicans were wearing the mantle of governmental openness. All to no avail.
Representative Winslow, who has been right on the money on this issue, asked a staffer to look into this for me, and I now learn that in fact there was no written testimony submitted relating to the bill in question, and that there’s not even a witness list. It’s possible (but the staffer isn’t sure) that no one testified about the bill at all! The bottom line is that it’s now impossible to know what was said at the hearing, or who said it. Poof! The hearing has vanished into thin air and might as well never have happened.
What I think this goes to show is that my modest proposal for a rule change is not enough. It’s not enough to require committees to provide copies of written testimony and witness lists if they exist. Committees should have to keep a record of testimony given before them, just as courts do. This is not technically difficult, nor, I think, would it be expensive, especially in light of the significant public interest in knowing what our government is up to.
Stay tuned for my next round of open letters to legislators and others to try to figure out who is in favor of the status quo and who is in favor of the public’s right to know!
Nice to have company working on this, though.