Bring Sunshine to the Legislature

When our state legislature conducts its business outside the view of the people, we must step in and demand changes to restore our trust and confidence in the legislative process.

Three practices that have become prevalent this session are of great concern and we ask that rules be implemented immediately to correct them:

A. House committee chairs are increasingly scheduling hearings on measures that are not available to the public prior to the hearing, while special interests appear to have had access to the proposed text for some time and may in fact have participated in drafting the measure. This thwarts citizen participation in the legislative process.

B. Senate chairs have held often lengthy hearings to receive public testimony, then pulled radically new language "out of a hat" and required a vote on the new text. When this is done, and it is not infrequent, the committee chair has bypassed public input and moved forward a text that has not been made available to the public for review. More distressing is when the text has been constructed with the assistance of special interest "experts" representing one side in the controversy.

C. Both houses have made use of staff donated as "interns" who are in fact experienced corporate executives placed and paid for by their employers to work alongside legislators and who enjoy unprecedented access. Many of the texts that are pushed forward without public hearing appear to be based on the work or advice of these "interns."

SPECIFICALLY, WE REQUEST THAT RULE CHANGES BE IMPLEMENTED TO:

1. Require adequate public access to bill drafts up for hearing, and disallow hearings on any measure where the text of the amendment has not been available to the public for at least the 48-hour notice period

2. Require that weekends and holidays be excluded for the 48-hour notice requirement

3. Prohibit committee chairs from hijacking (gut and replace) bills that have survived the legislative process up to that point

4. Prohibit the inclusion of unheard language after public testimony unless the language is a direct result of that testimony on the same measure

5. Prohibit posting of misleading information in official records (e.g., SB1061 did not have a public hearing but is shown as heard) and require posting of all official legislative actions (e.g., proposed HD1 for SB1061 does not exist in official records, and it had a public hearing)

6. Prohibit the practice of embedding corporate executives in the offices of legislators in the guise of "interns" and dismiss the "interns" currently serving.

WE THE UNDERSIGNED ask you to attend without delay to the above matters and indicate publicly what steps are being taken to remove the abuses described.

By signing this petition, I join others in imploring you to take the requested actions.