Maine politicos have long complained that some lawmakers abuse “concept drafts” to skirt transparency, but a meeting in Augusta Thursday may be the first step toward bringing an end to the controversial practice.
The Maine State Legislature’s Joint Rules Committee discussed a series of proposals during this meeting would reform the process by which lawmakers introduce legislation, particularly with respect to concept drafts.
Sen. Rick Bennett (R-Oxford), alongside several other lawmakers, set forth recommended rule changes aimed at improving transparency in the Legislature.
Generally speaking, concepts drafts serve as placeholder legislation that lawmakers can introduce with very few details aside from a vague statement regarding the bill’s intent.
A concept draft bill could come with only a generic title, such as “An Act Related to Water.”
The actual language of these bills is introduced as sponsor amendments on the day of the public hearing, meaning that they are not made immediately or easily available online for public scrutiny prior to the opportunity for public comment.
The effect, whether intended or not, is that impacted communities and industries are often unable to show up to the hearing on time to defend their interests or comment on a given piece of legislation.
The use of concept drafts to introduce complex pieces of legislation on very short notice has become increasingly commonplace in recent years, with many in Augusta arguing that the practice is counter to transparent government.
[RELATED: Increasing Use of “Concept Draft” Reduces Legislature’s Transparency, Undermines Public Hearings]
One notable example occurred in the most recent legislative session with an extremely controversial bill that ultimately became law.
This legislation sought to institute legal protections for those seeking or providing “gender-affirming health care” and “reproductive health care services” in Maine, two hot-button issues which had previously drawn massive crowds of protesters to the State House.
However, the text of the legislation — and the sponsor’s intentions — remained unavailable and unknown until just before the public hearing because it was originally introduced as a concept draft.
Rep. Anne C. Perry (D-Calais) introduced the bill during the first legislative session as a concept draft titled “An Act Regarding Health Care in the State.”
She proposed a sponsor amendment with the final language about a week before the public hearing was held, but due to the nature of the process, this text was not readily available for public review, frustrating members of the public who wished to make their voices heard.
During the Rules Committee meeting Thursday, Sen. Bennett proposed requiring concept draft language to be made publicly available online at least 24 hours before a public hearing is to be held.
“I really think we need some standardization of process if we are to maintain concept drafts, which I vigorously oppose — I think we should get rid of concept drafts entirely, except for the budget document — but if we are going to have concept drafts, I think we need some rigorous policies around them,” he argued.
Bennett noted, however, that he felt it would be more appropriate for the proposed text of these bills to be made available even further in advance.
“In this proposal, it’s one day. I actually think it should be much longer than that,” Bennett said. “There’s really no reason if a concept draft is carried over in concept form that we should have one day notice, or zero day notice, to what the actual proposal is going to be. Unhappily, this has occurred many times in this past session.”
Although the proposed language for concept drafts is sometimes sent to an interested parties list, Bennett argued that “it’s hard to know if you’re an interested party if you don’t know what the content is at all.”
Bennett went on to note that the titles associated with concept draft legislation is often incredibly vague, making it difficult to discern what it is designed to accomplish.
In his remarks to the Committee, Bennett urged lawmakers to consider how the entire system fits together when thinking about how best to reform the process for introducing legislation.
“It becomes very easy in the world of concept drafts for members to put forward ideas, and when you combine that with cloture,” Bennett argued, “it creates this really perverse system where everybody has to get all of their ideas in that they want to deal with in the entire Legislature in the month after they were elected, before any of us have a chance to work with each other, before the committees are even formed.”
Cloture refers to the deadline by which Maine lawmakers must submit legislation for consideration during a given session.
Bennett went to directly link the issues of concept drafts and cloture, urging the committee to consider “how the system, if we’re going to propose reforms, might work together.”
Several other lawmakers — including Rep. Janice S. Dodge (D-Belfast), Rep. Marc G. Malon (D-Biddeford), Rep. Cheryl A. Golek (D-Harpswell), Sen. Craig Hickman (D-Kennebec), and Rep. Jack Ducharme (R-Madison), among others — also expressed support for making substantial changes to the process for introducing legislation and considering concept drafts.
Sen. Hickman echoed the connection Bennett established between cloture and the proliferation of concept drafts, arguing that cloture should be eliminated entirely for the Legislature’s first regular session.
“I believe that cloture for the first regular session should be done away with, and if that is the case, there probably won’t be many concept drafts,” said Hickman, “Because one of the reasons we put concept drafts in, as chairs anyway, is to make sure we have a vehicle to deal with pressing issues that we may not have thought about before cloture.”
“And I do believe cloture forces people to put in a lot of concept drafts just to make sure they got a bill in,” he continued. “If we didn’t have cloture in the first regular session, then I believe there wouldn’t be a need for as many concept drafts as legislators put in. “
Hickman also suggested the possibility of only allowing chairs to submit concept drafts or limiting lawmakers to a maximum of one or two concepts drafts each.
Rep. Perry also spoke Thursday on the issue of concept drafts, noting her involvement with the controversial process that unfolded earlier this year with respect to her bill, “An Act Regarding Health Care in the State.”
She explained in her remarks that she had been under the impression that the wording of the bill would become public the moment it was submitted which ultimately was not the case.
“I learned a great deal because I put in a concept draft that created a lot of controversy, Perry said. “I had made assumptions…that the minute the wording came out on a bill that it was public. Of course, I found out that it was very different and not how it was done.”
“I found out the joint rules are very specific about concept drafts, looking at this as an amendment, and amendments do not get published until it comes out of committee, except for interested parties,” she explained.
Perry went on to recommend that concept drafts are not heard until there is specific legislation ready to be put through. She went on to suggest that there could be exceptions to this, at the committee’s discretion, if the concept draft sufficiently details what the forthcoming bill would accomplish.
Rep. Golek argued that while she feels concept drafts are “essential,” the process by which they are currently considered “disenfranchise[s]” members of the public from being able to fully participate.
“My suggestions aim to ensure the full participation of all stakeholders in our legislative process, constituents and legislators alike,” she said. “We must change how we handle legislative concept drafts. As a first term representative, I have seen members of the public often feel alienated from the lawmaking process by the existence of concept drafts.”
“There is no doubt that concept drafts are essential,” she continued. “Yet, how they are handled now, has unintended consequences that disenfranchise the public’s ability to engage in the lawmaking process.”
Other concept draft reform proposals proffered during Thursday’s meeting included requiring language to made available online a week in advance of public hearings and using concept drafts more sparingly.
Another recommendation was to make original sponsor amendments for concept drafts a part of the readily available public record for these bills.
It was also suggested that concept drafts not be assigned an LD number until the proposed language has been available for a week and, subsequently, that a public hearing not be scheduled until a week after that. As a result of this, lawmakers and members of the public would be guaranteed at least two weeks time to consider a bill’s contents before a hearing takes place.
Because the next legislative session will take place after the 132nd Legislature has been seated, the Committee currently has only the authority to make non-binding recommendations for the rules they ought to adopt.
No votes were taken on these proposals during Thursday’s meeting, but the Rules Committee expressed a plan to meet again in early August for further consideration of these suggestions.
I think 72 hours instead of 24 hours would be better. Old enough for legal gun sales, good enough for politicians who do not always have the taxpayers best interests in mind.
These “HACKS” have turned a Part Time Job into a Full Time Scam … I thought the legislature was adjourned ? Obviously the Unaccomplished Under Achievers such as Rick Bennet and Lisa Keim ( Who has NEVER held a job in the Private Sector !) have found a way to ‘GRIFT” the tax payers out of more money . By making work .