Washington Post: Maryland Legislature Should Post Committee Votes Online

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 2:46 PM

Today's Washington Post features an editorial calling for committee votes in Maryland's state legislature to be posted online -and we wholeheartedly agree.

While full floor votes are available online, that is currently not the case for commitee votes, which leads the Post to the following conclusion:

The legislature's love affair with opacity enables the usual mischief that public officials get up to when they can be reasonably certain no one's watching. A lawmaker may vote for a bill in committee -- to help advance the interests of a powerful business lobby, for instance -- then vote against it on the floor to project the image of maverick champion of the little guy. Come election time, your representative may tout only the floor vote, secure that the committee vote won't likely see the light of day.

Legislation to correct this by posting committee votes online will be introduced in the legislative session that starts next month. Montgomery County's delegation in Annapolis is already moving in the direction of voluntarily posting their own committee votes online. Amazingly, House Speaker Michael E. Busch, a Democrat, says he's not convinced a bill is necessary.

Mr. Busch ought to take a look around. Plenty of states make committee votes available to the public at the click of a mouse and in a timely way -- Virginia, to name one. New York's legislature recently overhauled its Web site to provide fuller, better and more immediate information online. The vast majority of laws passed in this country, and a substantial chunk of the public dollars spent on education, transportation, public safety and health, pass through the hands of state legislatures. This is the people's business. Why does Maryland continue to hide so much of it from public scrutiny?

That is a very good question.  Certainly, more could and should be done, but this bill should be a no-brainer. But, as the Washington Post states, based on Maryland's legislative history, we might find ourselves in the ironic situation where a bill to make the votes public dies a silent death in committee and we won't know who voted against it.

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