Moderation of the General Assembly’s Wrecking Ball

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity is out with its Freedom Index for the 2014 legislative session, today.  We’ve read through all of the legislation that made it to the floor of either the House or the Senate, scored the bills, checked how the legislators voted, and then scored them.  There was the usual unanimity (overall moving the state in the wrong direction, dramatically), but a few things stand out.

Looking at the progression of my favorite Freedom Index chart from year to year tells the tale:

In broad strokes, one thing that stands out is that the legislators, as a whole, moderated a bit this year, although not to the point of least-badness that they achieved in 2012.  We’ll have to go a few more years to see whether there’s an alternating pattern, but it is definitely interesting that, of these three years, the non-election year saw the worst scores.

One thing that these charts don’t show, but that is very noticeable in the rankings, is that three of the top 12 highest-scoring legislators achieved their scores mainly by not voting.  Sen. Frank Ciccone, Representative Gordon Fox, and Representative William San Bento all missed more than 68% of the relevant votes.  Because absentees only get one-quarter of a full vote for bills, missing votes tends to improve the scores of legislators who otherwise would score poorly.

It might seem like a design flaw that the index gives two of its top 5 slots to legislators who didn’t vote much, but three points suggest otherwise:

  1. If legislators are going to vote for bills that harm their state, then it’s an improvement for them not to vote at all.
  2. The quarter-point credit for missed votes goes both ways.  If the General Assembly were passing positive bills, then these legislators would have had lower scores than the people actually passing good legislation.
  3. The only reason it was possible for non-voting legislators to do relatively well was that no other legislators did better.  One way to look at it is that other legislators canceled out so many of their positive votes with negative ones that they couldn’t compete (or could barely compete) with those who just didn’t vote.  A magician who hits his assistant with his throwing knives more often than he misses her is better off sticking to card tricks.

That brings us to the Republicans.  Despite the overall moderation of the General Assembly, this year, Republicans continued to slide into negative territory, and none managed a positive score.  The trend is especially prominent in the House.

One likely reason is that we’re now two years removed from the leadership of Rep. Robert Watson, who was the Minority Leader and who staked out conservative positions.  He didn’t top the index in his final year, but he was a fierce contrarian in floor debates, which may have moved some of his peers to push the “nay” button.  With nobody replacing him in that role, it may be getting easier year after year just to go along.

The Democrat House speaker may make a difference, too.  Nicholas Mattiello is understood to be significantly more conservative than was Gordon Fox, and the Republicans may be more comfortable with him, leading them to be less inclined to vote against him on bills.  There’s some evidence for this possibility in the votes of Democrats.  Many of the progressives in the House improved their scores, this session, while some of the more-conservative Democrats slipped.

Thus, even though the overall results moderated a little (because bad bills still passed), there was something of a switch of the factions leading the way, versus those willing to cast the occasional protest vote.

Whatever the reasons, Rhode Island can’t afford anymore negative legislative sessions, in which small improvements (like the elimination of the master lever) are completely swamped by bills that:

  • Do substantial harm, like allowing state bureaucracies to commit to regional energy initiatives funded by tariffs, increasing energy costs and restricting the economy
  • Tighten the shackles that the state puts on its residents little by little, proving that the government doesn’t see itself as their servant, by registering music therapists and adding penalizing fees to marriage licenses to fund a private activist group, for example
  • Give itself special exemptions, by (for one) lifting the law that taxi drivers must use taximeters, but only when they work with state agencies, so that those agencies can negotiate better rates without them

That last one (S2741/H7932) may be my favorite bill of the session.  It’s essentially an admission by the state government that, “hey, it’s tough to operate in this place.”  Only, rather than turn things around, legislators are simply choosing to reinforce the impression that the role of the people and businesses of Rhode Island is to serve government.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in The Ocean State Current, including text, graphics, images, and information are solely those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the views and opinions of The Current, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity, or its members or staff. The Current cannot be held responsible for information posted or provided by third-party sources. Readers are encouraged to fact check any information on this web site with other sources.

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