The Rhode Island General Assembly has just completed a 'special' two-day session during which time close to 200 separate pieces of legislation were brought to the floor for a vote.

This frenzy of 'legislating' is nothing new. Rhode Islanders have, unfortunately, become accustomed to the sight of bleary-eyed, fatigued legislators facing a mind-numbing numbers of bills on which they must vote without serious discussion or debate. It's how the Rhode Island legislature conducts the business of governance.

Why, you might ask, do virtually all of the laws passed by our legislature get passed in a two-day spasm of lawmaking?

The answer to every question posed in this commentary, and the reason that our General Assembly conducts its business in such a reckless and ill-considered manner boils down to one word:

CONTROL.

Legislative leadership is able to exert tremendous control over the legislative process when every single bill comes up for a vote at virtually the same time. Legislative horse trading, keeping the pesky public and various watch dog agencies at bay and gagging independent-minded legislators are all nice benefits of conducting business in this manner, if you are a member of legislative leadership. For the rest of us, it simply means that our legislators are forced to vote on bills that they have no chance of reading and fully understanding - bills produced by a frantic process unencumbered by open meeting rules and regulations.

This method of doing business is not proscribed in our constitution. It is not set forth in rules that have existed since the beginning of time, rules that were designed to protect the citizens of this state from lawmaking run amok. What many Rhode Islanders may not realize is that their own senators and representatives have enacted these rules. They have done so deliberately, to allow control to be exerted. Our own legislature, our own elected officials who we send to the State House to represent us, deliberately set up rules that make good governance next to impossible. And then, they follow them.

Why do our legislators allow this farce to continue?

With a three month lead up to this special session, why did the leadership not plan for enough time to allow legislators and the public the ability to carefully hear, digest, debate and vote on laws which affect every person in this state? Why jam 200 bills into a two day session?

CONTROL.

Our lawmaking process is a festering problem that lies at the core of many of our State's other problems. Only by insisting on transparent and accountable government can we force change upon what is supposed to be the most representative branch of government

In the coming months, the MPRI will introduce you to our candidates for the legislature and state offices. We will also introduce an MPRI ethics agenda that our candidates will pledge to fight for when they are elected.

The MPRI ethics agenda will begin with insisting that our legislature follow the Open Meeting laws. "Sunshine is the best disinfectant," or so the saying goes. We think that the least our elected officials can do is to do the business of governing in public rather than in secret - including the critical process of actually passing our laws. We think it's not a lot to ask that Committee hearings be held in hearing rooms rather than in the hallway, balcony or even in a bathroom with no advance notice to the public. Although, I admit, that the fact that some of our legislators are conducting meetings in the bathroom does demonstrate a certain amount of irony.

The MPRI ethics agenda will insist that we commit to reforming our legislature's processes and procedures.

Stay tuned to the MPRI news to see what other changes our candidates pledge to make in the name of good governance.

Rhode Island deserves far better governance and leadership than we are receiving from our legislature. As a voter, you have the unique opportunity to help fix our system of governance. Whether you are a liberal, conservative or somewhere in the middle, we should all be able to find common ground and admit that the current manner in which our legislature operates is broken and works against the involvement and oversight of the voting public.

Continue to support the MPRI with your time and hard work and your donations. Together we can fix what's broken. And we should do that, because Rhode Island is worth saving.

Ken Block

We continue to get terrific feedback on our first video effort introducing the MPRI to the world. If you have not seen it yet, the video can be viewed here:

http://www.moderate-ri.org/videos/RI_worth_saving