John Burris Ends Up With Egg On Face

GOP State Rep. John Burris ended up with a little egg on his face today.

Burris is the chair of House Committee on Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee and today Senator Rapert”s bill, SB134, the bill to dramatically restrict a woman”s right to choose, was on the agenda.

The bill had came before the committee last week, but failed on a roll call vote when GOP State Rep. Justin Harris voted against it. Harris said he had a problem with a recent amendment, but would vote for it when it came before the committee again this week.

It appeared that Rapert”s unconstitutional bill was going to pass, but Rep. Burris wasn”t going to take any chances.

After the voice vote on the bill, Burris ruled “the ayes have it,” but immediately after his ruling two Representatives raised their hands calling for a roll call. While I was not in the room, from the video it appears the number of “ayes” and “nays” were about equal.

From the video, you can tell that one of the hands was from State Rep. Greg Leding who sits five feet directly in front of Burris. Procedural rules require the chair to recognize the motion, if it has been seconded, but Burris didn”t care about the rules today.

Here”s to the video and the fun begins at the 7:30 mark.

Burris blatantly ignored the committee members, purposefully ran roughshod over the rules, and immediately called on Rep. Kim Hammer to present a bill on an unrelated matter.

Committee Vice-Chair Rep. Reginald Murdock correctly called Burris out for ignoring the rules. Burris gave a lame excuse that he had already recognized Rep. Hammer, but Murdock kept pressing, noting there were plenty of hands in the air asking for a roll call vote. Burris again gave his lame excuse.

But Murdock would not let up, nor should he have since he was right. Murdock noted that Burris was ignoring the rules and was risking abusing his position as Chair of the committee. Burris haughtily replied that Murdoch could appeal his decision with the House Rules Committee.

It seems that some legislators brought this matter of Burris”s ignoring of the rules to Speaker of House Davy Carter”s attention and to Carter”s credit, he had the bill sent back to the committee after the House adjourned to have it voted on again. Carter probably knew they had the votes so it was no skin off his back, but he was correct in sending it back for a re-vote.

It”s an embarrassment for a committee chair to be called out in front of the entire House for not following basic rules and that is what happened today to Burris. I can”t remember the last time a bill was sent back to committee because the Chair ignored procedural rules.

The bill later passed out of committee with 11 votes, the bare minimum needed.

Why is all of this important?

Imagine a scenario where a committee chair decides he/she wants to impose their will on the passage, or failure of a bill, and declares a bill fails on a voice vote, when it”s clear it passed, but then declines to call the roll to get the specific votes lest the truth be revealed.

That is an abuse of power and that is kind of what happened today.

Burris wanted this bill to pass, and since it failed once before, he didn”t want to take a chance of it failing again, which would likely kill it for this session. Burris chose to ignore the rules to impose his will.

Even if Burris had made an honest mistake in missing the roll call vote request, he could have easily find a way to back up and call the roll, but he didn”t do that either. Rules be damned.

I know Republicans are new to power in the State Legislature, but if they can”t follow basic rules then we”re in for a whole bunch of problems.