In our last episode on the parliamentary wrangling between the chambers of the Massachusetts Legislature, House Speaker Robert DeLeo was insisting that under the Joint House-Senate rules, the House was in charge of deciding if and when any bill would move out of committee (and the Senate was in charge of cleaning the chimney and sweeping the hearth). The Senate had responded by proposing changes to those rules to reflect the position of John Adams, among others, that “the House and the Senate are equal.”
Yesterday, a conference committee of the two chambers met for the first time to try to reach a compromise. It didn’t sound like much progress was made, although House member Ron Mariano did comment on how nice it was to see Senate member Anthony Petruccelli.
Speaker DeLeo’s insistence on the prerogatives he claims for the House (which he refers to as “the committee process”) is often in evidence, dramatically so on one occasion last March when he engaged in a labyrinthine series of maneuvers simply in order to avoid having the House act on a minimum wage bill that the Senate had acted on first. Here’s how he explained why such elaborate choreography was required: “It’s always been my feeling that this piece of legislation or any other piece of legislation must go through the committee process and that’s what this bill did, go through the committee process.”
Well, maybe not always. Like the time the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a criminal statute prohibiting the secret photographing of a nude or partially nude person was not broad enough to encompass the modern invasion of privacy known as “upskirting.” The Legislature put a law broadening the statute on the Governor’s desk the next day. When asked why that bill had not gone through the usual committee process, the Speaker replied that “special circumstances” may justify a departure from the committee process: “What I have heard generally from the public on this particular matter, the outrage that I have heard, I feel very comfortable in having the legislation pass without the so-called committee hearing process.”
Looks like we’ll be seeing some “special circumstances” again at Wednesday’s House session. You might have noticed that the owners of Suffolk Downs racetrack in Revere (which as we know is in Speaker DeLeo’s district) reached an agreement recently to bring horse racing back for a two-year period starting this summer. That would be the first good news for Suffolk Downs, whose bid for a casino license lost out last year, in quite a while. In order for horseracing to come back, though, the Legislature needs to approve. And guess what? The bill that the House is planning to pass on Wednesday (a supplementary funding bill that Governor Baker filed for some accounts running deficits, notably snow removal) was amended by the House Ways and Means Committee today to include the statutory green light that Suffolk Downs needs.
So good luck to the Senate — and to all of us — in figuring out when the House means “the committee process” and when it just means “the so-called committee process.”
(Cross-posted at hesterprynne.net)
…is refuse to pass or maybe even refuse to act upon a bill that is shoved through the House in this matter. In fact, that is their ultimate card to play on any issue that they feel the House steamrolled them on in committee.
The underlying bill needs to pass pretty quickly so that (for example) the snow plow drivers can be paid. And the Suffolk Downs folks have a Senator as well as a Rep, and they will be pressuring him to bring home this bacon.
The underlying problem in all these cases is that, in order to thwart policy matters he disagrees with, the Speaker puts on a show of being “more procedurally punctilious than thou.” Nobody’s buying.
can be found here.
WAYS AND MEANS SIGNS OFF ON SPENDING BILL (in part)
Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee gave their unanimous blessing to a $347 million midyear spending bill Wednesday morning, hours before the full House is expected to vote. The committee voted 26 to 0 to advance the legislation (H 65). The House gave the bill initial approval Wednesday morning and plans to debate the bill later in the afternoon.
You can also watch the debate here.
Was there a vote on the Suffolk downs language in committee, or was it passed by unanimous consent?
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…is did anybody bother to object or was there an actual vote. The result is the same, but the accountability is different.
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Does anyone know there the two Republicans in the conference committee stand on the Senate vs House debate? I would think they would both side with the Senate since they complain so much about the process…unless they are being hypocritical.
Senate is Vinny deMacedo (until recently the ranking House member). Not sure who took Vinny’s slot on the House side
Senators Montigny, Petruccelli and Tarr, and Representatives Mariano, Bradley and Frost.
In deliberating its version of the rules, the Senate adopted some Republican amendments, which naturally increased their allegiance to the Senate position. Senator Tarr has told the press that the Senate “made the rules stronger.”
What’s interesting about this conference committee is that it’s not D’s v. R’s — it’s the Senate v. the House.
Bruce Tarr is the Minority Leader, but Vinny is ranking member on Ways & Means. Logically, if it was the Leader then Brad Jones would be there instead of Paul Frost (Frost is a banker, BTW). I had always thought it was the W&M member, not the leader?
By tradition, DeMacedo was always on appropriations bill conferences (I think that’s going to be true in the Senate, too, where he will be replacing Knapik), but in both chambers the leaders have made other choices for other conferences. The fact that Senator Tarr picked himself this time strikes me as significant.
There are SIX, count them, SIX Republicans in the current Massachusetts Senate.
Talking about “leader”, “ranking member”, and “Senate Republicans” obscures the reality that we’re talking about SIX individuals in a body of 40 members.
My suggestion is to put them all in a single “Republican” committee, let them divide themselves into as many subcommittees as they like, and be done with it.
The House has always controlled the flow of the bills. Why? Because there are 40 senators and 162 reps there are many more reps than senators on each joint committee. As a result, when it comes time to do move or kill a bill the senate members vote with their chairman while the house members vote with their’s. Republicans don’t count.
DeLeo is doing the right thing. Don’t dillute the power of the little guy.
n/t
You didn’t know that Christopher? I’m surprised.
Never thought of DeLeo as “The little guy” before.
don’t ever forget that.