PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

An opinion piece in the Washington Post this morning caught my attention as it illustrated an important, but often ignored, activity.

It is this:  Before advocating or opposing a piece of legislation, it is important to read all of the words in the bill.

Otherwise, all you are doing is uttering what could turn out to be falsehoods.

In this case, in the Post, the issue revolves around the controversial law passed in Georgia that many observers believe was passed to make it more difficult for Black persons to vote.

Not necessarily true.  But more about that later in this blog, even though I admit here that I have not read the Georgia bill.

First, I want to cite two examples of the “I don’t need to read the bill before talking action” proposition that I remember from my days as a lobbyist.

ISSUE #1:  Back in the day when the late Representative Mitch Greenlick was chairing the House Health Care Committee in Oregon, he thought he knew best about what the state needed to do in Medicaid reform.  He always had the best ideas, or so he thought.

So, he invested his personal staff with the task of drafting a major bill on Medicaid, the joint state-federal government programs to fund health care for low-income individuals.  When the bill was “unveiled” – and, I use that word advisedly – it ran to more than 200 pages. 

When it came up for a hearing in House Health Care, no one – no one – had read the bill.  It has not been unveiled in a reasonable way. 

Members of Greenlick’s committee hadn’t read it.  Lobbyists trying to represent Oregon’s Medicaid interests (including me) were left in the dark.  Members of the public were out of the loop.

Still, Greenlick didn’t care.  He persevered.  The bill, even though no one knew for sure what it contained, was passed out of committee and on to the House floor where it also passed.

That left lobbyists like me with the task of killing the bill in the Senate.  We succeeded, in part because no one had read it, but it stands as a bad way to do the public’s business.

ISSUE #2:  I was not involved in this issue personally because it occurred in Washington, D.C. and I worked in Oregon.  The issue was the bill to create the Affordable Health Care Act, which came to be called “ObamaCare.”

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a vote on the House bill, she admitted out loud that she had not read it.  One reason:  It took 2,000 pages to create ObamaCare.

The days since its passage illustrate that there are many good points in the bill, but also some bad ones.  Better if those who voted for it had read it beforehand to make expanding health care coverage in the United States a solid goal, not a misunderstood one.

Now, back to the Georgia voting law.

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating and financial officer for the Georgia Secretary of State, used a Washington Post opinion piece to illustrate various misunderstandings in the elections bill – most because those criticizing it have not read it.

And that, Sperling contended, includes President Joe Biden.

“The reaction to Georgia’s new election law has me worried again,”
Sperling writes.  “Though I have not received any threats yet, I worry that the president and others once again are spreading lies about what is going on in Georgia.”

Sterling’s points include these:

• The new legislation does not decrease early voting hours.  In fact, early voting hours have been expanded by adding an extra mandatory Saturday of early voting and continuing to allow Sunday voting.  Early voting hours must be open from at least 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a step up from the “normal business hours” required by previous law.  Counties can extend those hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., as many have done in the past.
• The bill does not prevent giving water to voters standing in line, though it does continue the policy of making it illegal to provide gifts of value to voters to reward them for casting a ballot in a certain way.  Notably, the bill allows groups to donate water for poll workers to give out.
• The bill does not add set out to restrict voting by requiring voters to present photo ID.  Ninety-seven per cent of Georgia voters have a driver’s license or a free state voter ID, so it is logical, Georgia officials maintain, to include that method of identifying voters by name.
• Contrary to popular belief, the legislation writes ballot drop boxes into law for the first time in Georgia history.  They were created by a temporary emergency rule in Georgia in response to the pandemic last year.   Without legislation, drop boxes would be unlawful.

So, all of this about the Georgia underlines the importance of reading actual language in pieces of legislation.

If you read all of the words, then it is entirely appropriate to make comments – pro and con – about pieces of legislation.