A fuss over bill titles is festering in the House.

In recent weeks House Democrats have changed the title of three high-profile bills to long, precise descriptions of what the bills would do.

The title change made it nearly impossible for House Republicans to make any substantive changes to the budget or to a bill outlawing school bullying. A proposal to change the state's annexation laws now also features a lengthy title.

The title matters because House rules say amendments from the floor must be "germane." The more detail included in the title, the less a House member can do with an amendment.

House Republicans say the practice violates the spirit of openness promised by House Speaker Joe Hackney. 

"The Speaker has done a good job being fair, but recently the process has become heavy handed," said Rep. Johnathan Rhyne, a Lincolnton Republican. 

The place to change the substance of a bill is in committee, said Rep. Bill Owens, an Elizabeth City Democrat and the House rules chairman. Any bill can be sent back to committee with a simple majority vote.  

"Time for debate on the floor needs to be the principle reason for the bill, not amending the titles to put in things that there's not majority support for," Owens said. 

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This morning, the House budget proposal had a simple, boiler plate name.

Before the day is over, the House is expected to change the name of the bill to an unwieldy, exhaustive list of all the taxes the proposal would raise. House rules say amendments must be germaine to the bill.

The rule exists to ensure that bills don't include random provisions unrelated to the subject matter of the bill.

The rule requires that if an amendment would run counter to the bill title, it would need a 2/3 vote to suspend the rules to be considered. The new name hasn't been added yet, so House members could still run amendments through.

Rep. Paul Luebke, a Durham Democrat, said that the tax package received 150 comments from the 30 members of the Finance Committee.

"It was an excellent debate, but that entire debate does not need to be repeated on the House floor," Luebke said.

"It's anti-democratic," said Rep. Paul Stam, an Apex Repubilcan and the House minority leader.

A bill filed this session would establish an independent commission to draw the state's district lines.

The goal would be to avoid the contentious and litigious debate that typically accompanies the required changes to the state's legislative districts, said Sen. Pete Brunstetter, a Lewisville Republican and senate sponsor of the bill. House and Senate Republicans said they believe the bill and others similar to it would curb gerrymandering.

"The big problem is it allows legislators to chose their voters and not vice versa," Brunstetter said.

The state constitution currently calls for the legislature to change districts after the federal decennial census. The idea is to have legislative districts reflect changes in population.

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It's clear which bill title Democrats dislike the most.

In speaking with legislators this week, the bill most cited by Democrats as misleading or vague is the "Defense of Marriage" bill.

That bill calls for holding a referendum on banning gay marriage in the state constitution.

Sen. Phil Berger, the Senate Republican leader, couldn't disagree more.

"It's about defending traditional marriage, which is the only type of marriage we've had up to this point," he told Dome.

His least favorite bill title is a federal one: The Employee Free Choice Act. That bill would expand the ways that companies can be unionized.

Still, Berger said he didn't think titles are that big of a deal.

"I think some people in a particular case might spend some time on the title for marketing purposes," he said. "But I don't know that a huge amount of effort goes into it."

Andy Taylor says bill titles are all about framing.

The N.C. State University professor said that most legislators know the substance of a bill by the time they vote on it, so a misleading or vague title won't help.

"A fancy title or some kind of framing should not fool them," he said. "But bills are also packaged for public consumption as well, and the public is not quite as informed."

He said that one key is whether the media picks up the official title or reports on the effects on the bill instead.

"The media are a very important intermediary here," he told Dome. "It really depends on people like you and people like myself — how political commentators, columnists and reporters discuss these things."

Dan Gearino says some bill titles are Orwellian.

Picking up on our recent series of posts on Dome, the conservative commentator writes on his blog that we live in "the Age of Misbegotten, Mawkish and Misleading Titles."

...some of those titles seek to disguise the bill's actual intent ("The Healthy Youth Act," for instance, which is simply yet another sex education bill sure to raise conservative hackles), while others engage in shameless public relations spin ("Taxpayers Protection Act," which doesn’t actually protect you, but only seeks to limit the state's plunder of your wallet). 

He says the titles are "a nifty primer on the Orwellian thinking behind the titling of our laws." 

Rep. Susan Fisher thinks a good title can't hurt.

In 2007, the Asheville Democrat pushed a bill to move North Carolina schools to comprehensive sex education, away from abstinence-only.

It's title: "Modify School Health Education Program."

The bill went down to defeat, but Fisher kept at it. She wrote a new bill that would allow parents to opt out of the classes and gave it a new title: "The Healthy Youth Act."

Though the new title is more vague, Fisher said it's not misleading.

"It wasn't to hide its purpose, it was really to emphasize its purpose," she said.

Over the years, she says she's learned to be skeptical of positive-sounding bill titles. She took issue with this title: "No Bullying Anyone at Public Schools."

"On its face, that sounds very all-inclusive," she said. "But if you read further into the bill, you will find that it skirts an issue or two."

The bill is a Republican alternative to Fisher's "School Violence Protection Act," which calls for students to be protected against bullying or harassing because of real or perceived sexual orientation. The GOP bill makes no mention of sexual orientation.

Bill titles have no legal standing in North Carolina.

In Congress, the name of a piece of legislation is often specified in the first section of the bill, which makes it a permanent part of the law.

But the titles given to bills in the General Assembly are not included in the bill itself, explained the ever-helpful Gerry Cohen, head of the bill drafting division.

Though bill titles are used in the bill digest and daily calendar, they are not part of state statutes or session laws afterward.

"When a bill becomes a law, the title drops off," he said.

Many legislative watchers don't pay much attention to them.

Christine Wunsche, director of the legislative reporting service at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Government, said that they focus on the long titles and the text of the bill when writing daily summaries.

"We really try when we summarize bills to give a lot of the details," she said. "Short titles just don't give enough information."

Here's another good title:

Harm Reduction Program Funds: Fund needle exchange programs.

Rep. Pricey Harrison has titled a few bills in her day.

The Greensboro Democrat, a prolific bill filer, said a good bill title can "put a positive spin on an issue."

She's co-sponsored a few good ones:

Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act: Would prohibit North Carolina's electric utilities from buying coal that comes from so-called "mountaintop removal" methods.

Access to Higher Education: Would prohibit state community colleges and universities from asking students whether they were illegal immigrants.

North Carolina Racial Justice Act: Allows racial discrimination to be taken into consideration when determining whether to impose the death penalty.

Still, she made a distinction between her college bill and, say, the Defense of Marriage Act.

"That was more about taking it out of a discussion of illegal immigration and making it what the bill is really about, which is access to higher education," she said. "The Defense of Marriage Act is a ban on gay marriages — kind of the exact opposite of what the title says."

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