Why Does Our Legislature Pass Auto Body Legislation But Not the Line-Item Veto? - Block
Friday, December 31, 2021
There have been recent stories about a potential veto override in order to pass yet another auto body industry bill that the automobile insurance industry says will raise our already high insurance rates. Speaker Shekarchi said that the auto body industry lobbied effectively for this bill. He said that this bill had lots of support from members of the General Assembly.
Over the last eight years, thousands of Rhode Islanders have contacted their elected officials asking them to implement a line-item veto in Rhode Island.
These elected officials often indicate they are generally supportive of the idea, especially during election season. Nearly all of them will do little to nothing to actually bring a line-item veto to a vote.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTMore than 100 members of the public have dragged themselves to the state house during most of those 8 years and spent hours waiting to testify in person in support of a line-item veto.
Why is it so hard to bring a reform to have Rhode Island’s government operate in a way that 44 other states have had for many, many decades, yet a narrow special interest like the auto body shops can seemingly get bills passed at will?
A line-item veto provides greater budget transparency by allowing a governor to strike pieces of the budget, forcing the legislature to hold an override vote for each struck item. With the line-item veto, a more nuanced debate can be had in the legislature regarding the merits of each struck item, making it very difficult to override vetoes of particularly bad parts of the budget.
Why is our legislature against greater budget transparency?
Is it because line-item veto advocates do not give $100,000 a year in political donations to members of the General Assembly, like the auto body gang does? Or is it because this reform will cause a change in the power structure of our government?
Either reason is a horrible reason for why our General Assembly refuses to allow a line-item veto to even come up for a vote.
Every election year it behooves politicians running for office to at least generally indicate that they support a reform that close to 70% of Rhode Island voters agree is a good one. The trick is getting these politicians to not just pay lip service to the idea of a line-item veto, but to take concrete action in support of making it happen.
The real problem is the speaker of the house. And by that, I don’t mean just the current speaker. I mean the position of the speaker of the house. Multiple speakers have refused to allow legislation that enables a line-item veto in Rhode Island to progress. They do this for the worst reason possible: to protect their personal and institutional power.
Covid has necessarily scrambled the priorities of our government. There was not much point in pushing for a good government reform while we all faced a serious public health crisis.
But now that our General Assembly appears to be ready to raise our collective automobile insurance rates due to the lobbying efforts of a very small group of individuals, it is clearly time to renew the push to make Rhode Island’s government operate in a way that the governments of 44 other states operate.
In this election year, multiple candidates for multiple jobs will indicate they support a line-item veto. What are they prepared to do to make it happen?
You can ask your elected officials to support the line-item veto here: www.lineitemveto.org.
Ken Block is the Chairman of WatchdogRI.
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