Stephen H. Devoto, writing for the Middletown Eye Blog, offers a cognent analysis about the lack of transparency and accountability among our legislators in the State Capitol. Mr. Devoto, in the course of discussing the release of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters‘ long awaited scoreboard on the environmental voting records of our legislators, states as follows:
Commentary:
The above scores are on bills that made it to a vote in the Senate and/or the House. It is relatively trivial to learn the voting record of our elected officials on those bills which they were asked to vote on. However, there were a large number of bills which were not voted on in one or both chambers of the legislature, because the legislative leadership decided that it would not come out of committee for a full vote. There is no way for voters to know the position of our elected officials on those bills, or to know whether they played a behind-the-scenes role in keeping the bill from coming up for a vote. In each legislative session there are hundreds of such bills.
There is a fundamental lack of transparency and accountability in government when voters have no idea who or what determines when important legislation is voted on or not. When something is not voted on, the attitude all too often seems to be, “Oh, the bill died, it couldn’t be brought up for a vote before the legislative session ended.”
This passive voice explanation makes the legislators appear as bystanders to the legislature.
Although individual legislators cannot be blamed when a bill dies in committee, they do have a responsibility to their constituents to make it clear why a bill died. This should be more than a passive, “The caucus decided …,” or “The leadership felt ….” Legislators ought to make it clear who made the decision and why, and what he or she, as our representative, did to support or oppose “the caucus” decision. After all, we as voters can only vote for an individual State Senator and State Representative, we cannot vote on “the caucus” or “the leadership.”
As a minimum, voters should be able to easily learn the position and the actions that their elected official take on every bill, whether it is voted on or not. Such increased transparency would lead to increased confidence and engagement in government on the part of citizens.
