| February 2007 | |
Texas House OKs making votes publicAUSTIN — Texas House members reached a milestone Jan. 19 and made their business even more transparent. The House approved an amendment to its rules that requires votes to be recorded and made public on the third reading of a bill. The amendment passed 84 to 57. “Four days into the 80th Legislature, we have changed the way the Texas House of Representatives does business, ” freshman Rep. Juan Garcia of Corpus Christi, who presented the amendment, told the Victoria Advocate. In past sessions if a citizen wanted to find out how a representative voted on a particular issue they had to jump through hoops and might spend hours researching it. But now the process should be a lot easier. The rule change requires votes to be recorded and made public within an hour on the Internet. Record votes already were a hot topic this session when House members re-elected their speaker Tom Craddick. “This amendment abolishes the system that lets legislators avoid taking public stances on important issues by requiring legislators to publicly record his or her vote on every measure and motion and display these votes on the Internet in real-time,” said Garcia. “Less than half of the votes taken in the Texas House are recorded in a manner that is useful to the public in determining whether their representatives voted in their best interest. Today, we made history by opening up the democratic process to all Texans. ”
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