Posted on: Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Conference committee procedures under fire

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

Government watchdog groups and others yesterday urged senators to change conference committee procedures, calling the current practice undemocratic.

Under current rules, a measure cannot be passed out of a House-Senate conference committee without the approval of a majority of the committee chairpersons for each chamber. That means in many conference committees, one chairperson can keep a bill from advancing even if the rest of the committee members want to pass it.

The rules also require conference committee reports about bills related to state money matters to have the signatures of the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means chairpersons.

The Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee and two members of the Senate leadership held the hearing yesterday as part of its study on the Senate rules. The group will make recommendations before the January session.

Government watchdog organizations said the current rules give too much power to the chairpersons of conference committees, which meet in the final days of the legislative session to work out differences between House and Senate versions of bills.

" 'One person, one vote' is a fundamental concept of democracy ..." said Laure Dillon, executive director of the Hawai'i Clean Elections Coalition. "The conference committee practice of allowing the committee chair to have a more powerful vote, a veto vote, than the other committee members is undemocratic."

State Attorney General Mark Bennett said while there may be a concern over whether the process of obtaining signatures on conference committee reports should be done in public, the rules do not raise any constitutional or legal issues.