03/10/07

Sunshine Week 2007

Legislature's rules help keep some votes hidden from public



By JOHN HANNA
Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Despite the blizzard of paper, buzz of activity and sea of lobbyists, reporters, staffers and visitors each year in the Statehouse, legislators still manage to keep some secrets about how they vote.

While lawmakers in recent years have made progress, particularly in the Senate, to ensure that more of what they do ends up in the public record, Kansans sometimes still can't find out how lawmakers voted as bills are being rewritten in committee or in the chambers.

And if senators and House members don't want a particular vote during a debate recorded, the two chambers have rules designed to keep outsiders from making their own, unofficial record. Video cameras aren't allowed in the Senate's galleries, and the House prohibits anyone from taking pictures of what appears on its electronic tally board when a vote is supposed to remain unrecorded.

Starting Sunday, journalists and others were observing Sunshine Week, a national effort to draw attention to the public's right to know and highlight places where government lacks openness.

"I would be troubled as a citizen of Kansas to be in a gallery and not be able in some fashion to report back on what's happening," said Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

The House's rule was highlighted this year when Speaker Melvin Neufeld's staff issued guidelines to reporters about their conduct in the chamber. The House has in recent years given news organizations less freedom to roam, though the rule on picture-taking is a long-standing policy.

"It seems contradictory to talk about transparency in government in one breath and then in the next ban photography when votes are taking place," said Doug Anstaett, the Kansas Press Association's executive director. "The recording of votes is how we hold our legislators accountable."

In some respects, the Kansas rules seem like quirks for a Legislature that is more open than counterparts in other states.

While state law allows closed caucus meetings, only Senate Republicans don't ban them completely, and their last such meeting was in 2004. Closed caucuses are the practice in other states, such as Pennsylvania and South Dakota.

And if both Kansas chambers restrict journalists' movements during a session, only 19 in the nation allow them to circulate at all, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Brenda Erickson, an NCSL senior research analyst, said legislatures often have practical reasons for the restrictions. For example, she said, reporters sometimes have lost space on chamber floors as staffs expanded, or because lawmakers worried about noise. Some states restrict access to House and Senate floors because members don't have private offices and reporters must cover the activities from a gallery.

"They do need to have space where they can think, work with their staff and draft legislation," she said.

While the NCSL says at least 18 chambers ban television cameras in their galleries, the Kansas House's rule struck Erickson as unusual. In many states, she said, only the recorded vote shows up on the voting board.

The Kansas House's rule dates to 1989 and the debate over abortion legislation. Before then, anti-abortion proposals often remained bottled up in committee. Leaders sought to avoid recorded votes on amendments during debate, fearing election-year attacks by abortion opponents.

The rule was a response to an abortion opponent photographing the voting board as it tallied an unrecorded vote, and using the information in a newsletter.

"Things were bad for us then," said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group. "Usually, the vote that makes it into the newspaper is final action, and really interesting things will happen on the way to final action."

The rule has remained in place even though the reason for it _ wanting to hide votes from abortion opponents _ is gone. A large number of conservative Republicans were elected in the 1990s, and the House has had a reliably anti-abortion majority ever since.

"It's just that you start a tradition, and it tends to stay," said Neufeld, R-Ingalls.

Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt acknowledged that a similar concern about unrecorded votes being used against members politically probably lies behind the Senate's ban on video cameras in the gallery.

Similar concerns also led the Republican majority to impose rules in 1989 against taking roll call votes on amendments during debate. Such recorded votes weren't banned, but 21 senators, enough to pass a bill, had to consent.

Over the years, Democrats and dissident Republicans chipped away at the restrictions.

The issue became hot again in 2004, when a rule limited recorded votes on amendments to five per bill, and it prevented a recorded vote on a key amendment rewriting a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The maneuvering delayed adoption of a proposal by legislators and voters for a year, and the Senate removed its five-roll call limit.

"That was the most glaring example of an attempt to use the rules to hide public exposure of certain votes, but it wasn't the first time," said Sen. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler.

But votes on amendments still won't be recorded in either chamber or in committee if members don't ask for it.

"Any time public officials move to restrict the knowledge that the public has of their activities, it bears close watching and objecting," Policinski said. "It's clearly designed to prevent legislators from being held accountable."
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