|
Legislative
Report 10-05
May 6, 2005
“My Way or the Highway”
The big news in Salem this week is that the House of
Representatives has decided to change the rules again.
House Speaker Karen Minnis has announced that because
the House and Senate have yet to agree on how much of the State’s budget
should be allocated to public education, the House will establish its own
Ways & Means committee. Speaker Minnis did something similar last
legislative session with less than productive results. One has to wonder
what the Speaker hopes to accomplish by doing it again, but it will quite
possibly do nothing more than extend this Legislative Session as it did the
last session – the longest in Oregon history.
Democracy is very hard and at times frustrating work
requiring elected officials to listen to and understand each other. It
requires that personal ideology must often give way to compromise for the
common good. Leadership is the art of getting to ‘yes’. ‘My way or the
highway’ is not a very helpful approach.
Enacting, repealing or amending state law is an arduous
process. The House and Senate each have committees to hear testimony on
every proposed change in the law. If a committee in the House, for example,
approves a proposal it must then be voted on and approved by the full House
of Representatives. Then the proposal goes through the same process in the
Senate. If both chambers approve, the Governor can then sign the bill into
law, let the bill become law without his signature or the Governor can veto
it. The process is designed to make it very difficult for a bill to become
law and less than a third of the bills introduced make it all the way.
The budget process is different but no less arduous.
Budget bills are heard by the Joint Committee on Ways & Means comprised of
both House and Senate members which is why it is referred to as the Joint
Committee on Ways & Means. Subcommittees made up of Representatives and
Senators review budget proposals, hold hearings on those proposals and then
make recommendations to the full Ways & Means committee. If approved by the
full committee, the budget proposal is then voted on by the full House and
Senate.
The Ways & Means process requires members of the House
and Senate to come to agreement. Unlike other legislation that can die in
committee, the State’s budget must be approved. The Republican-controlled
House and the Democratic-controlled Senate have obvious philosophical and
political differences. Resolving those differences by debate and compromise
is what our legislative system is all about.
Changing the rules in the middle of the game will
generate headlines but is not an effective way to conduct the State’s
business.
|
