Our Voice: Now is the time lawmakers should stop title-only bills

Legislative sessions like this one — supposedly short and manageable because a new budget does not have to be written — should give lawmakers the opportunity to consider procedural issues and not just policy.

So in that vein, there is one long-standing, disturbing practice we would like to see stopped — and that is the submitting of title-only bills.

This tactic is a crafty way for lawmakers to circumvent constitutional rules, and it is done so often we wonder if any of our legislators understand how unacceptable it is.

The state constitution says new bills cannot be introduced during the last 10 days of the legislative session, unless two-thirds of lawmakers agree. That’s a tough threshold to meet, especially during crunch-time at the end of the session.

So, to get around that, legislators introduce title-only bills as a kind of place holder for legislation they haven’t finished crafting.

These are bills with a title and a number and nothing else — no text, no description, no hint of a summary.

That way lawmakers can say the bill was introduced before the deadline, but have time to fill in the details later. It’s a sly move that prevents the public from finding out the intent of a bill.

Which is exactly why a deadline is necessary for submitting bills in the first place. It isn’t fair to introduce legislation at the last minute so citizens have no time to study the proposal or react to it.

But with a title-only bill, all anyone knows is something is in the works on a certain topic.

People should be able to discuss and comment on proposed laws and proposed changes to laws early in the legislative process.

Jason Mercier, with the Tri-City office of the Washington Policy Center, said there are rules that supposedly prohibit submitting these blank bills, but in practice those rules are ignored and it’s done anyway.

Last year, 69 title-only bills were introduced, with a fairly even split between the House and Senate, according to the Legislature’s topical index.

They all had ambiguous headings, like “Fiscal matters act” and “Marijuana act” and “Education act” and nothing more than a number.

These are such broad subjects, there is no way of telling what the bill is really about.

Washington is the only state in the country with lawmakers who submit title-only bills, Mercier said.

And that’s a pretty good indication it shouldn’t be allowed.

In the past, when the topic of title-only bills was brought up, lawmakers have defended the practice by saying it allows them to beat a deadline when a bill’s language needs tweaking.

But submitting a dummy bill for consideration is not the answer, and goes against the spirit of an open government.

It is going to take legislators with a strong moral compass to change what has become an acceptable bad habit, but we hope there are some willing to step up.

This session would be a good time to turn the soft rules discouraging title-only bills into tough laws that soundly prohibit them.

This story was originally published January 16, 2016 at 11:20 PM with the headline "Our Voice: Now is the time lawmakers should stop title-only bills."