WHO WAS THE INVISIBLE HAND?
Here's what I found:
- All notes and minutes from the Senate committee pertaining to creation of the right-stripping amendment are now absent from the file on HB 627 at the archives.
- A note in the Senate Journal indicates that one senator, Sylvia Larsen, was removed midstream from the Committee of Conference, replaced with Senator Flanders who was formerly State Treasurer, reputedly a very tight-lipped guy. One would surmise that Larsen refused to play ball with the boys.
Even after booting out Larsen they could not reach concurrence with the House.
- No notes exist in the file from the Enrolled Bills Committee.
- No notes exist from the Office of Legislative Services (the research arm for the Enrolled Bills Committee).
- The file contains not a whisper about the ballot exclusion from the Secretary of State or the attorney general's office.
- In fact, all notes, minutes, research, testimony, or records of any kind which reference the offending amendment are missing from the file, and it is never mentioned in discussion on either the House or Senate floor.
All we can find was that on June 30 after the technical check for spelling and punctuation, exclusion of ballots from right to know arose like a wraith to appear in a bill which had already been passed by both houses without the exclusion.
JUNE 30, 2003: One obtuse line, "revert to original language" was put into a technical amendment and passed by house and senate.
WHO WAS ON THE ENROLLED BILLS COMMITTEE?
Senators Eaton, Green, Clegg, D'Allesandro and Larsen. Though there are no notes from this committee, not even the customary form indicating who approved and disapproved of the final form, a minimum of three of the above-mentioned senators were clearly complicit.
It was a ballsy move. It seems unlikely they would have inserted this change in content, violating protocol for the Enrolled Bills Committee, without encouragement from an invisible hand.
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