It’s alive—it’s alive!
Of the dozen-some carcass bills that were still lurching about in the hopper mid-month, one remains unfilled and active at the Legislature. Senate Bill 106, which prompted Senate Stace Nelson’s outrage and a query to the Attorney General, goes before House State Affairs on Monday with this empty text from Senator Ryan Maher:
The Legislature shall pursue opportunities to enhance the state.
The carcass bill is a vehicle legislators can use to spring their last-minute ideas well beyond the bill filing date, which this year was February 2. Carcass bills violate transparency, allowing legislators to bring new legislation to committee or even to the floor without full public notice or testimony.
I can conceive of emergency situations that could arise in the last days of the Session that could require immediate Legislative action. However, to address such last-minute needs, I would suggest legislators pay a price: if they fail to anticipate a problem and submit an appropriate bill by the normal filing deadline, allowing the public and their colleagues to review the proposal before it surfaces in committee or on the floor, legislators should have to hoghouse an existing bill. If a bill is so important that it has to be introduced more than a month after the deadline, in the rush of the final week, then the sponsors should have to decide which existing bill they are willing to sacrifice to take care of that pressing need.
If Senator Maher or co-sponsor Representative Kent Peterson has a last-minute brainstorm, I would suggest tabling their carcass and hoghousing SB 176—itself born as a carcass bill—on allowing the Governor to declare martial law to shut down protests. House State Affairs takes up SB 176 and the SB 106 carcass at its Monday meeting, starting at 7:45 a.m. Ahead of those two on the agenda are SB 151 and SB 171 on ethics violations and investigations and SB 54 on campaign finance reform. That should be a fun hearing!
Very few of these last minute bills address some emergency. They are primarily a means by which the elite special interests and the majority legislative leadership squeeze some unpopular (and therefore hidden) bill, or an already beaten bill through the legislature.
That is not a carcass law bill. It is a vehicle or shell law bil to provide transparency in the process. There are many carcass law bills they could resurrect and gut and hog into monstrosities beyond any of our abilities to imagine.
All those empty vehicle bills killed so quickly after a bright Spotlight was shown on them. I guess the emergencies they anticipated, dissipated quickly after public attention was brought on them?
Thanks, very much, Stace!
Mr. Nelson, you are right that the vehicle bills were a blustery attack against transparency but do you think they will actually pull a car us off the table and gut it for heinous purposes?
Let us all be clear here: What Mr. H calls “carcass bills” are really transparent “vehicle bills.” I true carcass bill Mr. H has not yet seen but it is really funny when it happens.
The legislatures in some committee dig out from the buried dirt some tabled bill or one sent to a day beyond the end of hell and then they vote to zombie it, and then they gut it, and then then stuff the innards with a whole new law bill that nobody has seen. Then the vote to pass it, and it goes down to the floors, and there are speeches. People have a change to speech on it. And then if it passes it gets really neat. The now zombie carcass shambles off to a committee made up of 6 fellows from the legislatures and 4 of these fellows are already on board with the zombie idea so they all vote AYE. And there becomes a carcass law.
Mr. H, because he has not the experience of a Mr. Novstrup, uses the wrong terms in this case, and ans Mr. Novstrup will tell you, using the right words is important and intentionally using the wrong words is like lying.
Darn it, I used a wrong word and Mr. Novstrup is going to give me a whatfer.
A neato thing about this last vehicle bill (many carcasses lie about for fellows to zombie up) is that it is in the control of Mr. Rhoden. Most of you know that Mr. Rhoden is of the most powerful in the legislatures, he actually whooped Mr. Nelson in an election and he pretty much pulls all the strings in the house and probably tells that Mr. Mickelson fellow when to dance and when to take off his shoes.
The Rhoden Rhangers, a group I once dined with, are probably really cranking it up for a new race really soon and it will make Mr. Nelson grumpier than most.
I agree with Grudz that today the legislature is at least semi-transparent about their “vehicles.” In the 80s and 90s “vehicles” were driven over the the second house and turned into “carcasses.” The carcasses would serve as hoghouse vehicles.
This was mostly a majority leadership operation. Here’s how it worked in it’s most devious form. Majority leadership would spend some time finding bills on certain subjects that they had no intention to pass. The “vehicle bill” was usually found to punish a member of the minority party or from a member of your own party who had strayed too far from the party line.
The “vehicle” bill would be stolen in this way: it would unexpectedly pass the first house. The bill sponsor might think he’d done a great job getting a bill across to the second house, but really that “vehicle” had been stolen by majority leadership. The “vehicle” bill was going to be used for a hoghouse in the second house, if necessary. If not, it was going to die in the second house.
If you watched the committees closely you could often tell which bills were vehicles, because they would sit in committee in the second house and never be posted for a hearing. Then, on one of the last committee days, the bill would be hoghoused. If they were being really devious or desperate, they would have the hearing, but table a bill or two on certain subjects. These were the true “carcasses.” The carcasses would then be brought off the table and hoghoused. More often than not these hoghoused carcass bills would pass the second house, and go back to the first house for concurrence and end up on the Governor’s desk.
Even though it’s more transparent today, they should just ban the hoghouse altogether. I think Nick Nemec mentioned that anything important can get brought up through rules suspension.
Yes, Mr. Pay is correct. Those were the carcasses. People who use the term “carcass bill” today are weak media or people who don’t understand how the legislatures work.
Vehicle Bill. Even Mr. Nelson understands that concept and there is little else in the legislatures he understands except how to hide in the bathrooms.
If Mr. H wants to learn more about the true “carcass bills” he should ask Mr. Novstrup about “baby seals.” Mr. Novstrup is an experienced fellow in the legislatures, and knows all about how carcasses and baby seals work. Heck, Mr. Pay doesn’t even live in South Dakota and he knows more than most media. That is funny as all heck and get heck.
Mr. H, you need to get your terminology right. You lose debates when you use the wrong terms, but at least you can cuddle up with baby seals.
Well, Grudz, I lived and worked in Pierre on legislation for years and learned all the tricks. We even tried to use a few once or twice, but we didn’t have the power to pull off stuff, even if we wanted to. One year we had Lars Herseth working for us on a nuclear waste strategy, and Janklow was on the other side. That was a fun year. We got beat on the last day at 2:00 in the morning with a blanket over the clock. We won the vote, though.
Curious. Although Jackley said these sorts of bill are above board, he also, in his statement in a subtle/not so subtle way — that the legislature could change this process.
Mr Nelson…..will you or any of the other legislators be trying to change the “vehicle” bill process?
Mr. Dana, the Attorney Jackley has already told Mr. Nelson they are good to go with vehicle bills. And he is the best attorney in the state, while Mr. Russell is a disgraced attorney the Supreme Court has had to yell at and Mr. Nelson isn’t even an attorney at all.
Vehicle bills, and carcasses that have been gutted, are both fine and dandy and legal and constitutional. But it does irk Mr. Nelson, and using the wrong terms and having some people know more about it irks Mr. H.
I appreciate your insight in these matters, Mr. Pay, even though we disagree on the value of The Borehole and that there will never be wastes pumped down it. I know this is not a blogging on The Borehole, so I will wait for another to query you and Dr. McTaggart on the interesting location of it.
Mrs Grudznick – you totally (and it figures) missed my point. I KNOW that Jackley said the vehicle bills are good-to-go and constitutional. In my statement, if you would have read it, Mr Jackley ALSO said that the legislators could “change” the vehicle bill process if they wanted to. My question was to Mr Nelson (again, if you would have read it) —- will he or any other legislators change that vehicle bill process.
BTW, Mrs Grudz….even though, black and white, the vehicle bills pass the constitutional test, doesn’t mean they pass the smell test. And they don’t.
Looking back and reading your word salad, maybe a better response to you should have been….what?