Sanford stumps state for legislative ‘transparency’
Governor: Recording members’ votes would keep public better informed
Gov. Mark Sanford used a statewide flyaround Wednesday to drum up public support for a bill that would force the 170 General Assembly members to cast recorded votes.
Citing the nation’s current credit-financial crisis, Sanford said, “If there had been transparency, many of the problems we’re dealing with could have been avoided.”
South Carolina legislators rarely vote on the record, Sanford said, so the state’s taxpayers have little idea how their lawmakers vote, especially on funding issues.
“Requiring on-the-record voting for every bill that passes will inject some much-needed sunlight into what is too often a murky process,” Sanford said during a press conference at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.
A recent study by the South Carolina Policy Council, a Columbia-based conservative think tank, showed that 1 percent of the state Senate’s votes and 8 percent of the House’s were record roll call votes, Sanford said.
In the House, roll call votes are recorded electronically and appear on a board as red or green lights beside members’ names. The Senate doesn’t have electronic voting, and any roll calls involved the clerk individually calling out and logging the votes of the 46 members.
Most Southern states require roll call votes for final passage, although North Carolina mandates roll call on second and third reading of revenue bills while Tennessee requires them on all appropriations bills.
Sanford urged public support for a bill by Rep. Nikki Haley, R-Lexington, to force roll call voting for the House and the Senate.
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, has questioned the need for and cost of such a bill, but Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, is supporting it.
Sanford, with several legislators and legislative candidates arrayed around him, couched the issue in terms of reformers versus an entrenched status quo in the Legislature.
By Dan Hoover
The Greenville News
September 25, 2008
