http://www.azcentral.com/news/columns/articles/0425montini0425.html
State Legislature filled with geniuses doing a great job
Apr. 25, 2006 12:00 AM
The headline above this sentence was the original title for today's column. It went through many revisions, but in the end we couldn't put that particular column in the newspaper since knowingly printing lies can get us sued.
Instead, I decided to employ a tactic favored by some politicians at the state Capitol. It's called a "strike-all" amendment, in which the title of a proposed law is retained but the actual language is replaced with something completely different. You might have read about it in Sunday's paper. It's really simple.
Every bill proposed by a lawmaker is given a title. It then goes through a series of hearings before various committees, in which people like us can make comments about it, in favor or against. Sometimes, after a pet project fails, a politician will take another bill, strike out all the language below the title and replace it with his or her failed bill.
One example pointed out by The Republic's Robbie Sherwood is a proposed ballot measure to raise the retirement ages of judges. Its title was preserved but the language now would gut the state's Clean Elections system. You wouldn't know this from perusing the titles for bills on the Legislature's Web site, however, which allows strike-all proposals to slip through with little public input.
One of the people responsible for some of these legislative switcheroos is Republican Rep. Russell Pearce, who heads the House Appropriations Committee.
When told of complaints about this political three-card monte game Pearce said, "These are the same people who whine about everything."
Sure they are.
They're the kind of people who would gripe after having paid for a Rolling Stones concert only to hear the opening strains of Love Will Keep Us Together as the curtain rises on Captain & Tennille.
Or those who would complain after standing in line overnight to purchase a new book titled Harry Potter and the Impudent Paragraphist only to find that it is my autobiography.
It must be how Arizona Cardinals fans have felt for years going to see what is promoted as "professional" football.
One person who understands this political bait-and-switch very well is Dick White of Valley Interfaith.
His organization has volunteers who track legislation and try to educate regular citizens by taking them to the Capitol when the Legislature is in session.
"The general public isn't in the same situation as the professional lobbyist," he told me. "If someone is being paid to get his message across on a particular bill, he doesn't have to be there during a hearing. He's around full time and he gets heard. But the public can't do that. So if they don't know what's going on with something, like a strike-everything bill, that cuts them out of the process. And that's not right."
Instead, it's a way for the politicians that we count on to protect us from false advertising to use false advertising against us.
They would say that it's a good thing. That using strike-all amendments is the only way to introduce new ideas after the deadline for filing bills has passed. Only it's not the new ideas that we're talking about, but old ones that have failed or those that they'd like to sneak through.
The politicians who do this sort of thing can't understand why we'd be upset by it. And I can't blame them. Most of them have been in office for a long time and run for re-election under a campaign headline that continues to promise open, honest government. And we vote for them anyway.
Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8978. Read his blog at montiniblog.azcentral.com.