Although the Legislature closed up shop weeks ago, the work continues. When not in Olympia, lawmakers meet with constituents and fellow legislators while setting priorities and plotting strategies for the year to come.
When the Legislature reconvenes in January, one of those priorities should be the elimination of “title-only” bills. Such legislation, in which a blank bill is filed with the text to be filled in later, is an affront to the notion of transparency and an offensive attempt to avoid the state constitution.
Article 2, Section 36 of that constitution reads: “No bill shall be considered in either house unless the time of its introduction shall have been at least 10 days before the final adjournment of the Legislature, unless the Legislature shall otherwise direct by a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, said vote to be taken by yeas and nays and entered upon the journal, or unless the same be at a special session.”
Rather than adhere to that 10-day deadline or muster a supermajority, legislators have taken to submitting a blank bill and adding the details at the last minute. This prevents robust discussion in committee and prevents the public from providing testimony. Most bills go through extensive vetting in which anybody who is impacted by potential legislation can weigh in; but title-only bills often call for lawmakers to vote within hours of having it land on their desk.
“The transparency was awful. It was awful,” Rep. Brandon Vick, R-Vancouver, told The Columbian’s Editorial Board during a recent interview. “These policies are done this way because they can’t defend it in public.”
With Democrats in charge of both chambers and the governor’s office, they are the ones to be held accountable for title-only bills. But the option should be eliminated regardless of which party has control.
According to the Washington Policy Center, Bruce Feustel of the National Conference of State Legislatures said: “Most states I am familiar with do not allow title-only bills for legislative consideration, generally under the reasoning that you need to know the details of a bill to make an informed decision about how to vote on it and even where to refer it.”
During this year’s session, Democrats passed two controversial tax increases at the last minute using title-only bills. One will cause travel agents and tour guides to pay more; the other will tax big out-of-state banks. The bank tax, critics say, might violate the U.S. Constitution because it treats in-state and out-of-state banks differently, an assertion that could have been vetted had the bill gone through the Senate Financial Institutions, Economic Development & Trade Committee.
“What’s the point of passing a bill if we know we’re going to get sued for a violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and then we’re going to have to spend a bundle of legal money defending that lawsuit?” asked Sen. Mark Mullett, D-Issaquah and chairman of the committee. “We will never get a single penny of revenue from this bill.”
Lawmakers this year introduced 26 title-only bills; four of them were used. As former state Attorney General Rob McKenna told a Seattle radio station: “I think this violates the spirit of the constitution, if not the text. I would argue that if a bill is title-only it really isn’t a bill in the sense that the Legislature should be considering them, and in the sense that the framers of the constitution meant it when they wrote the law.”
Next year’s Legislature should move quickly to abolish the use of title-only bills.
