Today the Mitchell Daily Republic reports that Stace Nelson wants the people to know how their representatives vote in Pierre:
The South Dakota Legislature has spent 85 years recording its legislators’ voting records. A freshman representative is now working to make sure the public has better online access to every vote cast.
Rep. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, became concerned with voting records after a smokeout vote was not published on the status page for House Bill 1198, which pertained to businesses employing illegal immigrants. A smokeout is designed to advance a failed or stalled bill out of the committees and onto the full Senate or House floor.
“The voters have a right to know how I voted on one of their biggest concerns,” Nelson said.
Currently, the legislative website, http://legis.state.sd.us, has a page for each piece of legislation. Final committee and House or Senate votes are displayed on that page, as are votes on amendments. But the pages do not list every single procedural vote related to the legislation, and there is no way to view an individual legislator’s entire voting record without looking up every single piece of legislation.
Nelson wants all votes to be posted. He also envisions a link to comprehensive voting records on each legislator’s profile. The link would state how the legislator voted on each bill, the bill number, title and a link to the online status page of the bill.
“I would also like to see a comprehensive voting record spreadsheet of the full House and full Senate so that voters can see directly how their elected officials voted on every issue,” he said.
This, too, would include the bill number, name and a link to the status page.
After the final vote on the HB 1198 smokeout was not posted on the bill status page, Nelson contacted Jim Fry at the Legislative Research Council, who had the votes posted. But, shortly after, the votes “mysteriously disappeared,” Nelson said.
“The story behind this is the intentional hiding of controversial votes of representatives during several smokeouts that were first omitted from the state website, placed on there after I complained, then unceremoniously taken down later to again hide the votes from the public eye,” Nelson wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Republic.
Fry said he had the smokeout vote placed on the bill status page before he knew the LRC had a policy against placing procedural votes there.
“I did it on the fly and put one vote up,” he said. “Then I learned a policy had been set before that votes that didn’t change the status of the bill shouldn’t be posted, so we didn’t do that anymore. It was an error. Nobody wanted to hide anything.”
Nelson wants to see votes on every aspect of every issue placed on the site, which would allow the public to see how and where a bill or resolution died, and how legislators voted. The only vote currently recorded on the website for HB 1198 is the State Affairs Committee’s vote to defer the bill to the 41st day of the legislative session, which is “a polite way of tabling the bill,” Nelson said.
“Several weeks later I found out that the online bill status was changed to erroneously reflect that the last action to the bill was the committee recommendation to deferral to the 41st day, and all information of the results of the major action to the bill by the full House on Feb. 16 was removed,” Nelson wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Republic.
Nelson said the actual final disposition of HB 1198, which is not shown on the bill’s status page, was a House roll call vote not to smoke it out of committee. The page only shows the committee vote to defer it to the 41st legislative day.
Fry said all votes are posted in the House and Senate journals, which is where the smokeout vote is posted.
“There are no votes that are hidden, they’re just in different places,” Fry said.
He cited again that the decision to place votes that only apply to the final outcome of the bill was made before he became the LRC director. He added that all votes recorded on either floor will always be recorded in the House and Senate floor and committee journals, which are available online but must be scrolled through manually to find any specific information.
“Clearly, when you have the full House voting on the life or death of this bill, that’s a big action on the bill and the people have a right to know,” Nelson said.
The SDGOP Establishment is not happy with Nelson:
Fellow legislator Rep. Charles Turbiville, R-Deadwood, views Nelson’s efforts to enhance the website as a waste of time and resources.
Turbiville is chairman of the Legislature’s Executive Board, which is responsible for the activities of the Legislature in the offseason. He said final votes are the only ones that count, and other votes — such as smokeouts — don’t need to be easily accessible on the website.
“The problem is, he’s not following proper procedure,” Turbiville said. “Being a former military individual, I’m surprised he’s not following the chain of command.”
Turbiville said every other legislator who wants to change the legislative process goes through the Legislative Procedure Committee, which Nelson never approached and to which Turbiville referred Nelson several times, Turbiville said.
Turbiville said he sees no point in Nelson’s attempts to improve the legislative website. He said links on each legislator’s profile to the bills and resolutions they vote on “will not move people faster through the website.”
“The website, as it currently exists, does everything that we want it to,” he said. “The website allows an individual to pull up any bill and determine where it is in the process, and it also indicates how each individual votes.”
Nelson argues the legislative website confuses constituents and does not provide legislators’ votes on every issue. However, Turbiville said the site provides all final votes on all bills and resolutions.
“This year there were 105 legislators with 575 bills and resolutions,” Turbiville said. “Citing the way they voted on each one, that is a huge undertaking.”
Nelson recently received an estimate of 44 man hours and $2,200 from the Legislative Research Council to revise the website per his wishes. The e-mail, from LRC Director Jim Fry, stated the work could be done internally or by a Bureau of Information Technology programmer.
Nelson said he had a hard time getting research for his proposal to enhance the website. So, when he was invited to present his idea to the Legislative Procedures Committee, he did not have the proper information he needed.
“I asked the LRC for information and Turbiville said not to provide it,” Nelson said. “If they don’t give me the material to present, I can’t present.”
In the meantime, he’s gathering support from fellow legislators “the old-fashioned way.” He plans to bring the idea to the Legislature when it begins the 2012 session in January.
There goes Stace's chances to move up in the SDGOP hierarchy.
I have to admit, I appreciate where Rep. Nelson is coming from on this issue. Alas, when Rep. Nelson gets credit from Steve Sibson and Cory Heidelberger, he's doomed!
Posted by: caheidelberger | August 10, 2011 at 09:36 AM
If it takes about one week and costs about $2,000 to provide the requested info on the web in an easy to get to format, then what is the real reason that the powers that be don't want it? I vote for total transparency (the kind Stace wants, not the kind that Obama promised!). Keep up the good work, Stace.
Posted by: Lynn | August 10, 2011 at 04:58 PM
The young Mr. Nelson is on a mission, and I will be interested to hear why what he wants can't be done. This is the modern era, we can put information on web pages easily. Or at least some people can like this Mr. Fry.
(Vote Sibby and Newland in 2012)
Posted by: grudznick | August 12, 2011 at 08:10 PM
To think I thought that it would be at least 9 months again before I enjoyed that lovely feeling one gets from bashing ones self against brick walls.
That's it! I am drinking the Kool Aid. I am throwing facts, logic, reality aside and I am going with the naysayers. I will start by selling my ocean front property near Fulton and taking my family on the road with our recently won internet lottery millions that they we will pick up in Scotland and then jetting to Nigeria where we will pick up our share of $50 million dollars of African monies people forgot about. Then we will return in January & obey the Sith voice that says "these are not the votes you are looking for" the public to see.
Less stress & more fiber the VA doc says.
Gonna need lots more Kool Aid in order to swallow that (BS) fiber.
I do have this nagging questions that I could use some help with, since all of the motions we make are procedural to advance or deter an issue, is the 7-7 "much more better" of a procedure because we nicknamed it "smoke out?" Where in our rules & laws does it say we hide that vote? If committees only make recommendations, how then can a recommendation, before the full recorded vote of the House be final disposition when the full House decided the fate of a bill? Did the Legislature somehow discover a Einstein-Rosen Bridge and travel back in time? Is not the full recorded vote of the House "major action" to a bill? Oooops, I am showing my "extremist" nature again by not supporting opposition to the GOP party platform.
I forgot, these things have nuances that are waaaay too complicated for us average commoners to grasp. Carry on good people, "these are not the droids you are looking for."
:-D
Posted by: Stace Nelson | August 16, 2011 at 03:12 PM