The Oklahoma State Capital

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes—a sentiment echoed in the striking parallels between the current state of the House of Representatives and the events described in I Kings 12. After Solomon's 40-year reign, ending in a series of poor decisions, Israel teetered on the edge of rebellion as a young and untested king ascended to power.

That new King, Rehoboam, received two conflicting chains of advice. The wise, experienced advisors counseled him on presumably reversing Solomon's course and suggested becoming a servant of the people. The young, foolish advisors counseled differently: Rehoboam should be harsher than Solomon.

Rehoboam followed the latter advice, and the outcome wasn’t great.

The scenario parallels that of today’s House, where a long-term imperial leader who tightened control over the House and made his position even more imperial in scope—mocking transparency and deliberation—has left the building. A new young leader has ascended to the imperial speakership. Tomorrow has been dubbed “Coronation Day,” when the new leader will officially take the throne and seize the ring of power.

The question is this: Will the new leader surround himself with wise advisors—those who would urge him to relinquish power and serve the people of Oklahoma by fostering transparency and deliberation in the House?

Or will he choose the unwise path, consolidating power and entrenching the imperial speakership?

We didn’t have to wait long to find out.

The answer became clear with two key pieces of information, both now apparent: the identities of those the Speaker selected for his leadership team and the specific, new rules he proposed to govern the House.

To the first point, we now know the names of those in the Speaker's inner circle, and there's little gravitas, and I would suggest, little wisdom around that leadership table.

In the new Speaker's defense, when his predecessor stood by as the chamber's most thoughtful, conscientious, and conservative members were purged from the institution in the 2018 election, the culture of the institution was destroyed, culling its talent pool. The harmful effects of this purge will last for a generation. Only now has the makeup of the House begun to right itself.

To the new Speaker's great detriment, the person who took credit for overseeing the purge of 2018 appears to be at the leadership table, appointed by the new Speaker to what is ostensibly one of the new, made-up, fake leadership positions, (maybe we can talk more about fake leadership positions in a future article.) But, disturbingly, the name of that position is entitled, "Counselor to the Speaker"

I think that person’s personality will likely blend seamlessly at the leadership table, and he will find himself surrounded by others with similar temperaments—marked by innate aggressiveness, if not outright hostility targeting those who are reform-minded and conscientious. I suspect they will share a readiness to wield the Speaker's immense power punitively, at a moment's notice, with a hair trigger.

The leadership table, in my view, is filled with individuals who long ago abandoned the core principles of their electorates. They either lack any understanding of what a transparent and open process should entail or, if they do, are openly hostile to the very idea.

These personalities are almost certain to advise the Speaker to centralize power and limit grassroots policy.

In fact, I would say, after reviewing the list, that there’s unlikely to be a single principled viewpoint in that room with any regularity.

Even though the pickings are still quite limited, the new Speaker could have found at least one wise individual to inject the views and values of the electorate into the room when it mattered most, even if it meant disagreeing with everyone else at the table. The deficiencies of temperament and lack of wisdom, courage and gravitas in that room, will prove to be a costly mistake.

And then, to the rules: The House resolution establishing the new rules appeared to have been posted Friday and is set for consideration on Tuesday.

Would the new Speaker reverse the mistakes of the Imperial Speakership of Charles McCall and return to the ideals of reform so embraced by the first generation of majority Republicans?

After a thorough review of the document, I now believe, that depending on how the new rules are interpreted in their application, they may represent the greatest step backward in terms of transparency since the House began its retreat from transparency during the 2014 legislative year.

I certainly feel like these are the equivalent of Rehoboam doubling down on his predecessor's mistakes.

Firstly, there's a very disturbing and strange addition to the rulebook. It would require House caucus organizations to provide their membership lists to the House Clerk. This doxxing of House caucus members brings back painful memories of the previously mentioned 2018 purge of conservatives, where dark money forces culled the best and most principled members. The House member who took credit for leading the purge operation has just been appointed as the special counsel to the Speaker. Meanwhile, a new conservative group known as the Freedom Caucus has just organized in the House, notwithstanding the fact that up until recently, after the 2018 purge, most of the few conservative members of the House have been living underground, in fear of organizing officially, due to the possibility of being identified and targeted. It is difficult to interpret this new doxxing mandate as anything other than a threat aimed at that new organization.

Then, at least as of my initial review of the resolution, I believe the rules will gut the last vestiges of a key and important principle that the first generation of majority Republicans fought for—namely, that with very rare exception, once the session approaches its first floor deadline, legislation should not be considered on the House floor unless it is a "live round," i.e., it could go into law if passed.

Why is this so important?

You've asked a good question.

Lazy legislatures had been known to pass meaningless bills that can't go into law. That's because the bill lacked a title or enacting clause, both required by the Constitution.

By passing such bills, the lazy legislatures stay in compliance with legislative deadlines while keeping the bills alive for later in the session. These bills can then become part of a late-session avalanche of shucked legislation, creating who knows what havoc with the legal code on behalf of various, powerful, monied nefarious actors, all under the radar of late-session chaos as the mandated closing time approached.

The legislatures under the Imperial Speakership of Charles McCall started to gut this protection by allowing a wider array of leadership to strike the title and/or enacting clauses of the bills. Now, this new Speaker appears set to let any House author strike the title and/or enacting clause.

This will most assuredly result in more bills going late into the session.

Once those bills get into the late session, depending on how the new rules are interpreted, the late-session process will change as well. That's because the new rules substitute the 24-hour hold for conference committee reports (CCRs) with the term "legislative day."

So, currently, once a conference committee approves a bill, late in session, it still has to hold over for 24 hours before the full House can vote on it. This isn't much transparency, and if the bill has been shucked or morphed, it should be a much longer period of time, but it's still something.

The question is, how will this new change be interpreted?

Could it allow a CCR filed late one night to be heard first thing the next morning? If so, all those titleless bills from earlier in the session will not only be able to morph late in the session but also will leave very little time for the public to learn what’s in them before they are voted on. Even legislators voting on these bills—including the $13-ish billion appropriations document—likely won’t have time to read or understand their impact. After all, many legislators will be out enjoying dinners and entertainment courtesy of lobbyists when this legislation drops, and there's almost no way the legislator will have the gumption get up early in the morning, after that late night out, to read the previous evening's CCR drops.

That's not all. With a curious change of a single word, the new rules appear to potentially significantly impact a key reform from the 2011 Republican legislature. That year, a formal presentation process for conference committee reports (CCRs) was established. This reform forced proposed CCRs out of secrecy and into public view before the members of the committee could sign the document. Conference committee chairmen were required to give the CCR a public presentation, where everyone could see what was in the bill before it was signed by the committee members. However, the new rules change that presentation mandate from "shall" to "may." This change could potentially be interpreted in two problematic ways:

1. The conference committee chairman no longer needs to give the bill a hearing before it can be signed, meaning the reform of 2011 has been gutted; or

2. The author of the bill may not be able to get signatures on their CCR in the first place, because the chairman could simply refuse to give it a hearing, creating a yet another, new bottleneck in the deliberation process. In this scenario, a single person—a conference committee chairman—could block a bill that had already been approved by both the House and Senate in some form.

Neither of these outcomes is good. It's possible that this change is either simply a housekeeping item of some sort and it will be of no consequence, or is simply a byproduct of an amendment-by-committee thought process that doesn't realize the potential unintended consequences of the change, but, until that's proven, it must be viewed with an skeptical eye.

Then, most deceptively, there is the new committee system. Proponents of the new rules will likely use this as their justification for supporting the document. This aspect of the proposal is perhaps the most problematic because it gives cover to legislators casting a bad vote for this set of new rules. Less thoughtful legislators might fall for the logic that creating a two-tiered committee system—where a bill must pass through both a policy committee and an oversight committee before reaching the House floor—will lead to more deliberation.

However, this argument is based on a false premise. Deliberation rarely occurs in committee. Nearly every bill heard in committee passes the committee. House members almost never vote "no," either in committee or on the House floor.

The true deliberation occurs behind closed doors. It begins in the Speaker's or floor leader's office, where a select few decide which committee chairman to assign the bill to. It continues in the committee chairman's office, where they decide whether or not to hear the bill.

The new rules duplicate this closed-door process by adding another layer of closed-door gatekeeping. Now, two committee chairmen will make these decisions, behind closed doors. By creating oversight committees, the rules establish a handful of new gatekeepers—likely no more than five—who will shield the Speaker and floor leader from having to take the heat for refusing to put a bill on the floor. These gatekeepers will easily kill good legislation while benefiting from the attention of monied lobbyists and bureaucrats who want to push bad legislation.

This isn’t real deliberation. It’s a doubling down on a good old boys' system that favors monied special interests and government bureaucracies that have mastered the art of co-opting chairmen. Those in the grassroots, normal people, will have limited ability to hold these gatekeepers accountable. After all, that gatekeeper is probably in a district far away from the interested party.

When the House implements a truly deliberative process, it will be through the adoption a key reform: allowing each House member a set number of priority measures guaranteed to be heard in committee and, if approved, on the House floor—with the title and enacting clause intact. This reform would ensure that House members must vote "no" on bad bills rather than punting those tough decisions to a few gatekeepers behind closed doors.

So, that’s my take as of my first reading of the new rules. I want to be very careful about prejudging the intent of those pushing this document, but at first glance, I am convinced this is likely the biggest step back in terms of transparency and openness since the House lost its way on transparency starting in 2014.

This document, once approved, virtually consigns the new Speaker to the purgatory that has engulfed almost all his predecessors—a status quo term presiding over a very flawed system that history will not judge kindly. Even worse for him, it’s entirely likely this will be seen as the low point for transparency in the House, especially as the chamber begins to attract a new generation of transparency-minded legislators.

Just this week, with the filing of House Resolution 1001, a brave state representative laid out a vision for the future. For the first time in the modern Legislature, a resolution was entered into the record which describes an open system of governance where no one man holds imperial sway over the other elected members of the House. While that vision won’t be realized in this legislature, make no mistake—it is the future. We can reasonably expect that elements of this vision will begin to be incorporated into future legislatures sooner rather than later meaning that while we are currently in the darkest part of the night, we might have just glimpsed the first light of day on the horizon.

If you’ve found this update informative and educational, please forward it to your network and encourage your contacts to subscribe. Much more like this is planned.

Until next time.