Roll Call Vote Saves $400,000

Our state’s need to pass a comprehensive, permanent government transparency law – not some malleable legislative rule change – became abundantly clear on the floor of the South Carolina House of Representatives yesterday.

In the course of a vigorous debate on the issue of payday lending, lawmakers adopted a measure that would have imposed a new fee on these loans to fund financial literacy instruction through the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs.

The only problem with that – well, aside from the fact it’s government trying to score some free money off of a convenient enemy – was that the vote to spend this $400,000 a year wasn’t recorded.

State Rep. Nikki Haley asked for a recorded vote – something she shouldn’t have to do – but her request was not acknowledged by the Speaker’s chair.

Fortunately, another conservative lawmaker, Rep. Gary Simrill was also wise to what was happening and took the floor later during the debate to alert his colleagues to what they had just done – which was spend $400,000 without any of them putting their names on it.

Simrill got the House to reconsider the measure – this time on a recorded, or “roll call” vote.

And guess what – the same measure that only moments ago had been upheld anonymously was shot down by a 60-44 vote, with House Speaker Bobby Harrell obviously voting with the Democrats in the minority.

So government didn’t grow … good news, right?

Wrong.

While the House obviously has no business pickpocketing industries it doesn’t like, the bigger problem is just how easily Bobby Harrell’s version of “transparency” can devolve back into the same old business as usual crap that got us in this spending fix in the first place.

Here’s an excellent recap of exactly what we’re talking about from Nathan’s News, the blog of conservative Rep. Nathan Ballentine:

” … what this does is show how no one (outside of Representative Haley) thought enough to ask for the roll-call. You see, until the BILL (prefiled by Rep. Haley along with 20+ cosponsors) is debated and becomes a LAW, there are several items we will vote on everyday that will be done by voice vote. Those items will still require a member to have to ask for our votes to be recorded, then have to have the Speaker recongize that request, and then need nine colleagues to support that request to record our votes.”

As we’ve said on many occasions in the past, lawmakers aren’t being serious about government transparency until they open up the budget process completely and allow every vote to go on the record, with each lawmaker listen as either an “aye,” “nay,” “absent” or “not voting.

How exactly should they do that?

Stop voting anonymously and try implementing these recommendations.

It’s not rocket science, although you’d never know it from watching our lawmakers.

Seriously, folks. We can’t have anonymous votes growing government by $400,000 every time some Democrat or RINO decides to take on an industry they don’t like.

And the fact that our lawmakers would try to do something like that anonymously is not only irresponsible, it’s flat out duplicitous.

Update – It has come to our attention that Rep. Simrill has a significant amount of “poof in the roof.” That’s fine with us as long as he continues standing up for openness and accountability in government.

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