Smoke-Filled Rooms To Get An Airing Leaders Agree To Open Deal-Cutting Committees
Legislative leaders Wednesday tentatively agreed to open the long-secret negotiating committees that cut the ultimate deals on the budget, tax bills and other sticking points of legislation.
House-Senate budget negotiations get under way next Monday. For the first time in state history, the talks will be open.
A jubilant House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, the most outspoken advocate of open negotiations, called the tentative agreement with the Democratic-controlled Senate a major breakthrough.
Open government means better legislation and helps reconnect people with their government, he said.
Lawmakers may even be able to pass a budget and the other must-do pieces of legislation and go home on time, rather than going into overtime, he and Senate budget Chairwoman Nita Rinehart, D-Seattle, said in separate interviews.
House Republicans and Democrats have been pushing hard for open conference committees, the last bastion of “smoked-filled room” politics at the Capitol. Newspaper executives have been pursuing the issue for the past two years, insisting that the best policies are produced by open negotiations, widely reported.
Ballard had threatened to boycott all closed meetings, essentially leaving the Senate with little choice but to agree, or to face a standoff that could greatly extend the session and generate bad publicity. But Ballard said Senate Majority Leader Marcus Gaspard, D-Puyallup, sounded satisfied, rather than resigned, about the plan.
The proposal, still being written in final form by staffers, says that anytime four or more of the six negotiators meet, the session must be open. That’s the same rule local governments must follow under the state’s Open Meetings Act: if a quorum is present, the meeting is open.
Conferees still could meet informally, two and three at a time, to try to smooth out various sections of the budget, or whatever the issue assigned to the conference committee might be. That is existing practice, Ballard noted. The most common strategy is for the House and Senate standing committee chairmen to meet or talk on the phone to hammer out a compromise, he said.
Ballard said many legislators were leery that meaningful discussions would be possible with press and lobbyists watching.
“But I think it will be like on the floor of the chamber, where we discuss the merits of bills and work things out, and pretty often don’t argue to the galleries. At times, I actually think it will come together quicker with open conference. Some negotiations should never have happened. Some members were unhappy and would pout for two weeks” but wouldn’t dare if the cameras were rolling, he said.