effect changes in the legal sense. The revision committee in Wisconsin, however, may call attention to any change deemed advisable as long as the proposed alterations do not affect the scope of the bill. The committee in Massachusetts may report as amendments changes in the legal effect. It will be seen that at best the legislatures have taken only half-way measures to assure that bills, perhaps admirably drawn for introduction, shall not be rendered ambiguous, inconsistent and impossible through amendments which may be adopted. Yet regardless of how thoroughly measures are examined and corrected before third reading, if the way is clear to introduce amendments on final passage gross evils may result. It works out about as follows: "The clerk announces the reading of a bill; he begins its reading, when a member offers an amendment which no one understands but himself and the amendment is adopted. The reading goes on and the bill is passed as amended. In the hurry and probable confusion of the moment, no one but the mover of the amendment may know exactly what it is or how it affects the nature and subject matter of the bill."45 It can be appreciated that members are loath to hold up amendments presented on third reading simply because they do not understand them. The course of least resistence is to remain quiet and acquiesce. Accordingly a prohibition upon all amendments on third reading was inserted in the New York constitution of 1894,46 which unfortunately has been construed to admit amendments until the final section of the bill has been read. Yet if amendments are adopted at this stage final passage is delayed by the constitutional mandate that all bills must lie printed in final form for three days on the desks of members. More than thirty legislatures forbid by the rules amendments on third reading. To amend a bill which has reached this stage it is necessary to recall it to second reading, adopt the amendments and advance it again to third reading. The spirit of the provision is violated by the practice of numerous legislatures which permits a motion that the bill be called back to second reading and recommitted with instructions to report certain amendments forthwith. 45 From the speech of a member before the Constitutional Convention of New York, 1894. Record, vol. I, p. 479. 46 Art. III, Sec. 15. Without leaving his place the chairman of the committee designated immediately reports the bill as amended and it is restored to its place on third reading. Other states either permit under the rules amendments freely on third reading or systematically violate the rules as do Kansas and the Indiana Senate. The value of ordering a bill back from third to second reading in order to amend is therefore dependent upon the time which elapses before the amended measure comes up for final passage. If Ohio practice is followed, amendments on third reading (the usual time for amendments in Ohio) are referred to a select committee of one, the person proposing the amendment being named, who announces immediately that he has amended the bill as directed by the House, which acts on it forthwith. The measure then goes at once to final passage. Nothing is gained by this useless formula, since all the evils of hasty amendment and passage survive. But if the bill called back to second reading to amend comes up on third reading in the order that any bill does, if it is called back in fact so that it goes to the foot of the third reading calendar, members have time to come to an intelligent conclusion. A more effective means of attaining the desired end occurs in the constitutional requirement that all amendments be printed before being acted upon.47 The experience of those states whose constitutions contain such provisions has been that, the temptation to passage the moment after amendment being removed, the rule which sends the bill back to third reading and compels it to come up in regular order on third reading has been observed in spirit instead of being suspended by unanimous consent. Of course cases have occurred in which the amendment was hastened to the printer and received back in half an hour to be passed hastily, but as this involves considerable difficulty they are comparatively rare. Whether the mandate that all amendments shall be printed extends to those which merely strike out matter and propose nothing new 47 California IV, 15; Colorado V, 22; Idaho III, 15; Illinois IV, 13; Missouri IV, 29, 30; Nebraska III, 11; Pennsylvania III, 4. Unfortunately this has been held in Colorado not to apply to amendments recommended by conference committees. (Board v. Strait, 36 Colo. 137.) It may be repeated that New York very wisely requires the printing of a bill in final form three days before passage. Missouri requires that all amendments be incorporated in the engrossed bill and the engrossed bill be printed. has given rise to some doubt, but better opinion seems that printing anew is necessitated. Pennsylvania came to this view in 1913,48 although earlier custom had been to put the bill on final passage at once. Amendments whether printed or not should be attached by responsible clerks to the copies of the bills on the files of members. A busy legislator should be able to refer easily to the whole measure, but has no time to clip amendments from the journal and paste them on a copy of the bill. Vermont makes this possible in a less satisfactory manner by printing on the calendar the citation to the page of the journal on which the amendment may be found, while Massachusetts inserts it therein in full. Amendments are usually disposed of without roll call unless the ayes and noes are demanded. Alabama is an exception to the general rule in that her constitution requires the names of all those voting to be entered in the journal.49 It is possible that a bill, passed by one house, might be completely modified by amendments introduced in the other. These amendments might then be adopted by the first house without a roll call. The measure in its final form would thus escape a recorded vote in the house of its origin, although the constitution might require an aye and no vote on the passage of all measures. In order to render this practice impossible, the constitutions of seven states require that votes of one house on concurring in an amendment of the other be entered on the journal.50 Today, however, the constitutional prescription that final passage shall be by ayes and noes entered in the journal has been generally interpreted to imply that, although a bill has once passed the house on a recorded vote, concurrence in amendments adopted afterwards by the other requires a similar vote.51 Thus it becomes impossible for either house to escape going on record on the measure in its final form. Indiana is an exception in that measures returned with amendments to be concurred in do not come up a second time for final passage but are accepted by a viva voce vote. 48 Legislative Journal, 1913, p. 3632. 49 Alabama IV, 64. Of course it does not follow that there is always a real roll call. 50 Colorado V, 23; Louisiana 40; Mississippi IV, 62; Missouri IV, 32; Pennsylvania III, 5; Virginia IV, 5; West Virginia VI, 31. 51 The constitutions of three-fourths of the states contain this provision. The prevailing practice in considering amendments made by one house to measures which have already passed the other lends itself to grave abuse through the power of the presiding officer to call them up at will as messages from the other house. He is thus enabled to select the most favorable time to rush concurring action. Such control over the fate of amendments would be destroyed if a special order of business were devoted to consideration of messages from the other house, and if amendments in which concurrence is desired were placed on the calendar. Precautions of this nature are taken in Vermont. Not only are members informed of amendments from the other house by their appearance in full on the calendar, but a definite time is set aside for their consideration under the order of business of Senate (or House) proposals of amendment. A rule of the New York Assembly is likewise designed to assure deliberation on such proposals. Amendments made in the Senate to measures passed by the House are to be referred to the committee which originally reported the measure,52 but unfortunately this is never observed. There remains one possible reform concerning the treatment of amendments which can be stated very briefly. Under general parliamentary law amendments once adopted by the house on second reading cannot be struck out on third reading unless a motion to reconsider has been carried. Motions to reconsider involve retracing the steps by which the bill passed second reading and are subject to the restriction that they must be made within a certain time, usually twenty-four hours after the vote proposed to be reconsidered has been taken. Great inconvenience is apt to arise from the difficulty of modifying an amendment once adopted, should a minority prove obstructive. On the other hand, amendments proposed by a committee, although adopted by the house when it agrees to the report of the committee, are not treated as an integral part of the bill and can be altered or stricken out at will. The suggestion here is simply to provide a similar method of striking out amendments offered from the floor and adopted at second reading, should they be found undesirable at third reading. 52 Assembly Rule 11. ROLL CALLS ON FINAL PASSAGE Roll call on the passage of each measure is required by the constitutions of thirty-six states.53 The New England States are exceptions. Among them, however, the ayes and noes may be demanded by a fraction of the members. The constitutional requirement of the roll call on the final passage of bills, or in concurring in amendments, is of doubtful value. The journal of the Ohio House, selected at random from those of several states, records fifty-one roll calls on the last day of the 1915 session, and twenty roll calls were not unusual upon an ordinary day, although there were 121 names on the roll. On the last day of the 1914 session of the New York Assembly there were 208 roll calls, the roll containing 150 names. Similar cases could be multiplied in every state which requires roll calls on final passage. Now it is impossible to call a roll of 150 names honestly in less than fifteen minutes. On this basis thirteen hours would have been so consumed in the House on the last day of the Ohio Legislature and fifty-two hours in the New York Assembly. An ordinary day's session would have to devote five hours to roll calls, for the states have been slow to devise mechanical contrivances for recording votes. Wisconsin led the way at the present session by adopting an electric voting machine. Roll calls on numerous measures are possible simply because the roll is not called. Go through the journals of any of the thirtysix states mentioned above and you will find measure after measure upon which no dissenting voice was cast. Indeed a real division. will occur with conspicuous infrequency. The results of the 208 roll calls in New York to which reference has been made, show that only fifteen record as many as five votes in the negative, and of these only eleven could be called real divisions. Since many measures meet with no opposition, an experienced clerk can tell as soon as he has called half a dozen names whether further call will reveal any negative votes. If none are apparent the rest of the roll is called very rapidly and a member must watch carefully to catch his name, if indeed it be called at all. A skilled clerk of the Pennsylvania House has been known actually to call 207 names in 59 seconds. Under the short roll call of New York, names of but a few members are called by the clerk and the bill is declared passed 53 Index-Digest of State Constitutions, pp. 844-845. |