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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Ind. Gov't. - "Remember the controversy in the Indiana General Assembly [in 2004] when House Speaker Pat Bauer attempted to permit an absent member to vote via computer?"

"Remember the controversy in the Indiana General Assembly [in 2004] when House Speaker Pat Bauer attempted to permit an absent member to vote via computer?" That is a quote from this ILB entry last Sunday. The entry was about an Eastern Kentucky legislator who had his college intern cast several votes for him, and I used it as a take-off for other stories about Pennsylvania and New York, as well as the Indiana classic where an effort was made to allow an Indiana legislator in, I believe, Florida, to cast a vote via his laptop.

Today the Indianapolis Star has this item in its regular Sunday column, Behind Closed Doors:

Breach of rules provokes wrath

Call it the case of the disappearing vote.

During a roll call on an amendment in the Indiana House on Friday, Rep. Dave Cheatham, D-North Vernon, voted no.

Which was strange, since Cheatham wasn't even in the House. Instead, he had asked to be excused to attend a funeral in Southern Indiana.

Republicans noted the vote and complained. Then they noticed something even stranger. Though they had a copy of the roll call showing Cheatham's vote, the public record had been altered and a new roll call -- this time showing Cheatham had not voted, along with a few other mysterious changes -- had taken its place.

House Minority Leader Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, was furious. "It's just as if it never happened," he said angrily.

House rules bar members from voting for another member. It happens frequently, though, when a representative has stepped away from his or her desk for a few minutes. That scenario, Bosma said, was one thing; voting for a member not even in Central Indiana was another.

And, he said, it was even worse to then change the official record. That can be done -- and occasionally is, when a member has accidentally voted the wrong way -- but there's a parliamentary process that must be followed.

In this case, Bosma pointed out, there was no process at all. Just the whim of the majority. "What else is being changed around here?" he asked, saying that Republicans may have to examine the archived video of every vote taken this session to ensure that the public record is accurate.

"Follow the rules," he scolded Democrats. "Think twice before we go any further down this path."

Rep. Chet Dobis, a Merrillville Democrat, was presiding over the chamber at the time, while House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, was meeting with the governor.

Dobis, known as a stickler for following the rules, told members that, from now on, they shouldn't ask someone to push their vote button for them from across the room, let alone the state.

I've underlined the portion above because of its tie-ins to this Feb. 5, 2006 ILB entry, which was the beginning of a series of entries expressing concern about the video record of the House and Senate. Here is a quote from a column in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette at the time (unfortunately no longer accessible online):
Allowing Hoosiers to watch the House floor debate via the Internet has been a welcome move forward into the 21st century. But what happens when a member goes too far?

House Speaker Brian Bosma was faced with that situation last week when one Republican member during debate on a bill made an inside joke about another GOP lawmaker that was construed by many to be an allegation of marital infidelity. And he did so knowing the other man’s wife was watching the proceedings on the Internet.

Bosma immediately chastised the member, who later gave a quick apology. But the damage was done.

The question then became, what do they do about the joke on the Internet archive? In the end, Bosma and House Democratic Leader Pat Bauer agreed on a motion to allow the lawmaker to withdraw his comments from the permanent record, which includes the Internet. By the next morning, the online video had been spliced in a way that cut out the comment.

Everyone seemed to agree on removing this particular item, but there are no rules written into House procedure on the issue. So what happens if a member simply embarrasses himself and wants to remove that?

Those are questions Bosma is struggling with. “This is the first time we had to deal with this issue, and we had to make some hasty decisions, maybe I should say prompt decisions, on the matter,” he said. “We are at least setting some temporary precedent until our rules can be expanded to cover this issue.”

Bosma also promised he would never unilaterally alter the video record and hopes future Speakers would not as well.

The law concerning the Indiana Legislative Council, IC 2-5-1.1, contains a number of provisions about the video record - sections 12.1, and 13 through 16. A review of this statute, along with the Rules of the House, reveals that neither the rules nor the statutes have yet been "expanded to cover this issue."

A review of the House rules did, however, reveal this provision:

75. Change of Voting Records. The roll call as recorded on the recording equipment shall not be altered or changed in any manner, by any person, except by a constitutional majority upon written petition setting forth the reasons for the change of the recorded vote. The petition and the action thereon shall be entered in the Journal.
A Nov. 8, 2006 ILB entry expressed concerns about the video archives of the House and Senate, noting that they were important Indiana historical documents, and set out some recommendations:
First, both Houses should stream their session days live, plus archive the videos, permanently. Currently the House archives during the session, but does not retain the videos once the next session starts. The Senate doesn't even go that far -- you can only watch the Senate session online as it happens; nothing is preserved. [Note: This has now changed - the Senate is now following the House precedent of making the previous 2007 session days' videos available for viewing on demand. But where are the 2006 video records of either house?]

Second, all committee meetings should be streamed live, plus archived. Right now, the public cannot even get a seat in a committtee hearing that allows them to see and hear what is going on.

Third, "archived" means make permanently available online. Look again at Ohio - you can watch Ohio proceedings online live or archived, going back through 1997, plus order DVD or VHS videos. Their plan is soon to make video-podcasts downloadable also.

Fourth, the House and Senate daily sessions should be indexed (eg SB #238 - Third Reading), as in Ohio, allowing the viewer to go immediately to the desired position. (It might be possible to do this in conjunction with the Journals.) In fact, the entire Ohio setup should be studied, as they seem to be light years ahread of Indiana, tech-wise!

Fifth, the process - archiving the videos, access, prohibitions against editing out portions - should be detailed in statute or in the joint rules.

In 1851 the debates and journals of the Indiana Constitutional Convention were carefully and laboriously preserved for the ages. We continue to use and reference them today. Recording and preserving today's sessions of the General Assembly is a very simple thing. But we are not doing it very well.

Conclusion. All of this ties in to the concerns the ILB has expressed many times, that during this era of changing technologies, the Indiana General Assembly is dropping the ball on its responsibilities to permanently preserve and make accessible the Indiana administrative rules, the Indiana statutes, and the Journals of the House and Senate (including the voting records), as well as the newest record under the control of the General Assembly, the video archive of the session days.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 25, 2007 08:10 AM
Posted to Indiana Government