Commercial Appeal
Lawmakers open committee meetings
Appropriations only one not public now
By Reed Branson
Feb 9,2001

JACKSON - Mississippi House and Senate leaders pushed
through legislative rule changes Wednesday aimed at opening
to public review most of the all-important conference
committee process in which differences in legislation are
debated and bills are finalized.

Under a joint rule change overwhelmingly approved by both
chambers, all but the Legislature's appropriation conference
committees would be considered to be open to the public.
Chairmen would announce the possible locations of the
conference meetings. It would then be up to interested
parties, be it press, public or lobbyists, to track down the
details of where and when the meeting would occur.

"This does not go the entire distance, but it moves us on
down the field,'' said House Speaker Tim Ford (D-Baldwyn),
who along with Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck unveiled the proposal to
Capitol reporters.

Currently, most regular committee meetings and the full
House and Senate floor sessions are open to the public. And,
in fact, some committee chairmen have allowed the press and
public in to witness the negotiation discussions in
conference committees.

But the move to officially declare conference committee
meetings open comes after lawmakers here were widely
criticized last year for inserting language increasing their
own retirement benefits into a bill during a conference
committee in the final days of the regular session.
Lawmakers ultimately repealed the retirement benefit in a
special session.

But in attempting to remedy the complaint, which was leveled
mostly from columnists and editorial writers around the
state, the leadership faced the problem that about 50 such
conference committees (not counting dozens more on the
budget), are crammed into about a week and often conducted
on the fly.

In fact, often they are not even actual meetings. Instead,
one or two members of a six-person conference committee,
along with a key lobbyist or two, will reach agreement on a
final version of a bill and then carry the printed
compromise to the others for their signature of approval.

The leaders of the House and Senate appropriations
committees, refused to go along with the concept, insisting
that private negotiations were necessary to hammer out the
details of a $3.6 billion general fund budget.

Under the new rule, the chairman of a standing committee
would not announce when or where each specific committee
would meet. But the announcement that the meeting is planned
would give interested observers a road map to find out,
perhaps by asking the conferees or the staff, where and when
a conference committee would meet on a particular bill.