STATE HOUSE – State Rep. Deborah Ruggiero (D-Jamestown, Middletown) is sponsoring bipartisan legislation to require the General Assembly to make it easy for the public to see how legislators vote in committees.
Jamestown/Middletown Rep. Deb Ruggiero
Introduced Jan. 26, the bill (2010-H 7202) would require that the General Assembly’s Web site include all roll-call committee votes. It’s been referred to the House Finance Committee for review.
“People should be able to find out where their legislator stands on all the issues that are put before them. In the legislative process, a great deal of the work on a bill occurs during the committee process. It should be easy for members of the public to find out online which way their legislators voted in that step of the process,” Ruggiero said in a statement.
Currently, although the online record of each bill in the Assembly reflects whether a committee as a whole has voted for or against it, the Assembly’s Web site doesn’t include a vote tally or a listing of which committee members voted for or against it. The only roll-call votes on each bill that are posted online are the ones taken on the floors of each chamber.
When a bill dies in committee, the committee votes are the only votes ever taken on it, so the public should be able to see who voted the bill up or down, she said. Currently, a member of the public who wants information on a roll call vote has to call or write to the General Assembly for that information.
The bill will not result in any additional cost to the state, Ruggiero says.
“Transparency and readily available public information are absolutely critical to making democracy work the way it should. The public needs this information to make smart decisions about their elected representatives. These days, the first place many active citizens go looking for information is the Web, so we should be putting this information there for them,” she said. “This is a small change that shouldn’t be difficult to implement, but it would provide important information that voters should have.”
The bill is being cosponsored by Rep. Brian Newberry (R-Dist. 48, North Smithfield, Burrillville), Rep. John G. Edwards (D-Dist. 70, Tiverton, Portsmouth), Rep. Patricia A. Serpa (D-Dist. 27 West Warwick, Coventry, Warwick) and Rep. Peter F. Kilmartin (D-Dist. 61, Pawtucket).
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Newport, RI
