Constitutional amendment proposed to do away with requirement to read bills in full
With all the fuss in the House this session about waiving full reading of bills, Rep. John McCrostie, D-Boise, offered a solution today: A constitutional amendment doing away with the requirement for full reading of bills, and instead requiring reading of the bills by title.
“Readings go back to an earlier period in parliamentary history. They originally provided a way to inform illiterate legislators and the public about the provisions of a bill by reading the bill aloud,” McCrostie, a recent law school graduate, told the committee. Today, he said, “Bills are rarely read at length. In 11 state legislatures, a bill is never read in full, and never read in full in at least one chamber of at least 27 state legislatures.” Instead, the reading requirement is fulfilled in those states by reading the bill’s title.
“It’s fair to believe that if legislators were elected into office, their constituents believe in not just their ability to govern, but even more simply their ability to read,” McCrostie told the House Ways & Means Committee. “And legislators have ready access to bills, both in hard copy and electronic form, to read bills on their own as they prepare for committee deliberations or deliberation as a fullbody.”
McCrostie said he also wanted to address “the elephant in the room, which has also been the donkey in the room – both parties have used this reading requirement to slow down the legislative process.”
He said the question is: “Are both parties willing to come to the table, to lay down their arms on this item, to more efficiently run the Legislature? This question holds a lot of depth. … So in order to begin addressing that question, I ask for this committee to send this RS to print.”
To amend the Idaho Constitution, a measure would need two-thirds support from each house of the Legislature plus majority support from the voters at the next general election. McCrostie said today, his intention is just to get the proposal out for discussion.
House Majority Caucus Chairman John VanderWoude, R-Nampa, said, “I understand this is just for introduction. I have some real problems with the issue of doing it this way, but I’m more than happy to introduce it to have that discussion. But to change the reading of the bills I think is not necessarily a good idea.”
With that, the committee voted unanimously to introduce the measure.
