By Conduit for Action
Recently during a meeting of the Legislative Council, an Arkansas Senator voiced his concern over a lack of transparency and accountability regarding the committee votes. State Senator Jimmy Hickey said during that December 20, 2024, meeting, “If this body is going to act like the General Assembly, then I want it to be the same way it is on the floor. I want the votes to be recorded.”
Conduit for Action agrees, and here’s why.
The Legislature posts a history of each bill. You can read the bill, see who sponsored it, see which amendments were added, see what committee the bill was assigned to, see the date the committee sent the bill to the full Senate or House, and you can see how each legislator voted on the bill on the floor of the Senate and House. There is one huge, glaring exception which keeps the public in the dark on extremely important issues.
Senate and House committees usually avoid voting on the record. That is because legislators want to keep committees as a place to kill or pass a bill without their constituents knowing how they voted.
There are two issues that keep voters in the dark. First and foremost, most committee votes are by voice votes; those in favor all say “Aye” and then all opposed say “Nay.” The bill passes or fails based on what the committee chair hears. Second, a bill may fail more than once in committee, but looking at the bill history you will not know that the bill has even been presented for consideration.
Here is an example of the type of conduct being protected from public view. During the 2022 primary election campaign, then Senator James Sturch put out campaign mailers claiming he fought against the left’s Critical Race Theory (CRT). If you tried to do a quick fact check of his claim, you would have found that HB1761 of 2021 to prohibit CRT was assigned to the Senate Education committee of which he was a member and that it died in committee almost six months later because the session ended. You would have been left with the impression the committee never considered the bill and perhaps Sturch could have been a supporter of the bill.
Unfortunately for Sturch, upset legislators who wanted to prevent the teaching of CRT ratted him out. They told us there had been a committee vote, and Sturch was the only Republican to vote with the Democrats to defeat the bill. If the vote had been only by voice vote the public still would not know how Sturch voted, but the legislators told us it was one of those rare occasions when a voice vote was challenged and then a roll call vote was taken.
With CRT being such a huge issue and with legislators assuring us a roll call vote was taken, Conduit for Action decided to look into the matter. This meant we had to review committee agendas for each day the committee met until we found the day the bill was considered. Then watching the video for that meeting, we found the vote and heard Sturch vote against the bill while all other Republicans voted for it. Sturch’s campaign was caught in a lie, a big lie.
The CRT vote was hugely important to voters, but voters would have been kept in the dark except for other legislators ratting him out, a rare roll call vote, and someone like Conduit for Action having the resources to check days and days of agendas and videos. It shouldn’t have to be that way. Voters should always know how their legislators voted, whether on the floor or in committee.
During the 2023 Regular Legislative Session, Senator Bryan King proposed a rule change to make all Senate committee votes roll call votes, but the Senate voted down his proposal. In other words, the Senate voted to allow Senators to hide their committee votes from voters which may allow some to lie to their voters about their record. The House of Representatives did not consider such a rule.
Will legislators stand up for transparency during the Regular Session of the 95th General Assembly? Conduit hopes so.
Remember this. Every time a Senate or House committee votes by voice vote, the legislature is saying “The voters don’t need to know how we voted.”
THE PEOPLE OF ARKANSAS SHOULD HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW HOW SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES VOTE, EVEN IN COMMITTEE, THEREFORE, CONDUIT FOR ACTION:
- CHALLENGES OTHER CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATIONS TO JOIN US IN CALLING FOR TRANSPARENCY IN COMMITTEE VOTES IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE.
- CHALLENGES REPUBLICANS IN THE SENATE AND HOUSE TO ACT FOR OPENNESS BY MAKING EACH COMMITTEE MEMBER’S VOTE ON BILLS ON THE RECORD.
- CHALLENGES READERS OF CONDUIT NEWS TO MAKE LEGISLATIVE TRANSPARENCY IN COMMITTEE VOTES A KEY ISSUE.
Will your Senator and Representative go on record to try to fix the problem, or will your legislator approve of keeping the public in the dark by doing nothing?
