RALEIGH – For those outside of Raleigh, it wasn’t much of a pronouncement. Sure, it could make sneaking last minute items into the state’s $18.8 billion budget harder by changing one of the longest held traditions in the legislature, but will it really mean anything?
“I’ll mention one of those changes that will occur whenever we negotiate with the House to work the difference the changes on our budget versus their budget, it will be open and will notify you as quickly as we know ourselves,” said Democratic Sen. Marc Basnight, the president pro tempore and the head honcho in his chamber. He was speaking to a group of reporters the day after the Senate rolled out its budget. “Any kind of discussion and the meeting of what’s occurring in that budget negotiation will be public.”
All that might seem like meaningless gobbly-gook. But here’s why it just may mean something to everyone.
For as long as anyone I’ve talked to can remember, the conference committees between the House and Senate that negotiate the final budget legislators send to the governor has been closed door affairs.
And they are, we scrubby media types have been lead to believe, one of the prime venues for strange little bits of pork (you like your teapot museum with one lump or two) and un-debated changes to state law.
Oh, and they are specifically exempted from the state’s open meetings laws.
Allowing the public to scrutinize the process would presumably discourage some of that last minute largess, or at least give folks a chance to weigh in before the final draft comes along.
It would also allow folks to see part of the real game. Sure, the governor puts out his plan; the honorables nod, and set off writing their own. We in the press slavishly follow the House and Senate budgets that are put out. But it’s really the compromise between those two positions where real governance happens. Here-to-fore, only those cutting the deals really knew how they were cut.
So will the House go for it? It seems so.
“I have nothing to hide, so it’s okay with me,” said House Speaker Jim Black. Like Basnight, Black lays down the law for budget negotiations on his side of the building.
Opening the conference committees up seem to be one more thing the honorables are willing to do in an attempt to restore public confidence in the General Assembly after nearly a year of stories about ethical lapses and lapses in judgment at the highest levels.
So this could really be something?
Yes, say advocates for government reform.
“The more eyes on a process the better, always,” said Bob Phillips, executive director of North Carolina Common Cause. Phillips has the unenviable job of convincing people with power, influence and all the rest of it to give up bits of their power, influence and what not.
“The way the current system is set up, it’s difficult to know – much less have any ability to shape – what’s coming out until the deal has been cut,” Phillips said. So a change in that system could be a good thing.
Could be.
“It will be interesting to see even with open conference committee meetings, whether that is true openness,” Phillips said.
Dang. It’s reality check time.
Basnight himself offered a few caveats on all this openness.
“Now there will be no open door when the Speaker (Black) and myself sit down,” Basnight said. As he describes it, those meetings are “only a small part of the process” and really geared toward “shutting down the session” rather than dealing in specifics.
And Basnight said there may be informal meetings among some of the chairman of various appropriation subcommittees and their counterparts that won’t be announced.
O-kay. Those aren’t big loopholes or anything. Curiously enough, they’re not ones Phillips begrudges.
“I even understand how there need to be some conversations on process that are closed,” Phillips said, quickly adding, “On those final decisions, you want to have that out there in the open.”
And it sounds like that’s what Basnight plans, and Black is willing to go along with.
“The actual negotiations between the differences, these chairs will open it up,” Basnight said.
There are problems, sure. Whether any of us scrubby press types will actually be able to scramble to all the last minute conference sessions is a big question. And I don’t think anyone really believes that all the behind closed door wheeling and dealing will go away – call me a cynic, everyone else does.
Still, the effort to make things more transparent seems to be there, in some part.
Whether that leads to a budget with fewer teapots and more respect from the public remains to be seen.