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.
More after the jump.
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The rule on bill titles is 20 years old, Owens said. It is intended to keep debate to a reasonable time limit and to prevent a bill from being amended into a law about something else.
Owens said that unlike previous sessions, long debates are common.
"The Speaker and myself have both been as fair as anybody has ever been to the minority party," Owens said.
Rhyne said the effect of changing bill titles to complete descriptions of bills ensures that a small number of people — the dozen or so Democrats on any one committee — decide what a bill will say. Issues such as annexation and taxes do not necessarily follow a party line, he said. He agreed that Hackney has improved things generally for Republicans.
"You get judged by what you do on the close bills," Rhyne said.
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Re: Bill titles rankle Republicans
Do we actually believe that the Democrats in the General Assembly would do anything that ressemble bi-partisanship? No. On every amendment proposed by the Republicans on the House's budget bill, the Democrats shut them down. I witnesses Rep. Blust rewrite a amendment for the sake of a Democrats who said he would vote for the new amendment. guess what happened. The Rep (Anson) said after the new amendment was put up that he would not vote for it. With that kind of horse hockey going on the the State House, it is the Democrats who are the party of NO. No to every single proposal put forward by the Republicans.