The rules of legislative bodies, including Congress, often provide for those in leadership roles to have the virtual power of dictators in deciding the fate of the various bills introduced by the members each session. 

There are many examples of this situation in past years which, if known by those who elected them, should have caused the individuals involved to be, at the least, censured and ultimately replaced.

The rules of the House have provided for what is called a discharge petition to be used to force bottled up bills out of committee and onto the floor for a recorded vote.  Senator Inhofe, when in the House, used this manner to force out of a committee a bill he considered to be very important to the citizens.  Just what the bill was slips my memory since sleep has intervened in the years since then, but it was considered quite a victory for the people at the time, and the bill in question was passed on a floor vote.

In the Oklahoma Legislature, this bottling up has been used almost every session by individual members of leadership to prevent popular bills from ever arriving to a recorded vote by either a committee membership or the House at large.  It has been reported to me that there is a similar procedure available, but is much more complex and therefore difficult to accomplish, probably by the design of past legislatures (controlled totally by Democrats).

More recent examples of this include what is called the Tenth Amendment Resolution” in the 2008 Session.  This was HJR 1089 authored by Rep. Charles Key, R-Oklahoma City, which would have placed the Congress and president on notice to cease violating that amendment in the treatment of the various states’ rights.  This resolution passed the House by a vote of 92 to 3, so it was a real bipartisan vote.  It was sent to the Senate for approval where former Senior Pro-Tem Mike Morgan, D-Stillwater, refused to even send it to a committee, thus killing it.  This resolution has been re-introduced this session as HJR 1003 and passed the House by a smaller majority, with about 12 no votes, and sent to the Senate, where Pro-tem Glen Coffee, R-OKC, will hopefully give it a hearing.  As a resolution, it does not go to the governor since it does not establish or amend a law.

Also this year, Rep. Mike Ritze, D.O., R-Broken Arrow, submitted House Bill 1414, the “open carry law.”  This bill would have made Oklahoma law comply with the Second Amendment by allowing law-abiding citizens to openly (visible) carry firearms (keep and bear arms). 

The Speaker of the House, Chris Benge, R-Tulsa, assigned the bill to the Public Safety Committee which is chaired by Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa.  Rep. Tibbs has refused to allow the bill to even be read, let alone voted on, in the committee, and since the deadline for bills to be voted on the floors of the originating house passed on March 6, it is dead for this session.

Unfortunately, there are some parts of the Concealed Carry Permit law that are blatantly in violation of the Constitution, so HB 1414 would have been a real benefit to a majority of Oklahoma citizens.  There have been conflicting reports as to her reasoning for this action or lack of it.  In any event, it seems to me that there is something wrong in the rules that allow one person to deny a hearing and vote on such important bills.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 and is filed under Editorials.