Latest news with #OfficeoftheClerk
Scoop
5 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
The House: Parliamentary Agency Resources Under Pressure
Parliament risks being overwhelmed by an increase in public engagement on bills, Clerk of the House David Wilson told MPs this week. Wilson, along with Speaker Gerry Brownlee and Parliamentary Service Chief Executive Rafael Gonzalez Montero, joined the Governance and Administration Committee on Wednesday. The event was part two-albeit a month late-of the Estimates hearing for the Office of the Clerk and the Parliamentary Service. Brownlee is not a cabinet minister, but even so, he is the minister responsible (as Speaker) for Parliament's agencies, the Office of the Clerk (OOC), and the Parliamentary Service (PS). He oversees the PS but the OOC is independent. Much of Wednesday's hearing was focused on a perceived strain on the OOC's staff and resources. The source of that strain has apparently come from the increase of three things: the increased use of urgency, the number of public submissions on bills, and the amount of scrutiny by select committees. Such technical, behind-the-scenes parliamentary issues are dry but crucial to the effective oversight and transparency of government, and to participation in the law-making process. Both are sacrosanct to a functioning democracy. Wilson said the Office of the Clerk currently has the resources to cope with the aggregate demand for its services. His concern though, is being able to cope with a potential "new norm" of having unprecedented submissions on bills, which he said they would "really struggle to deal with". "We can deal with one or two bills that attract a huge amount of public interest [but] we couldn't deal with those simultaneously, though, with current resources," Wilson said. So would such a shift mean that some public submissions will not be able to be processed because the Office of the Clerk wouldn't have the capacity? There is potential mitigation on the horizon in the form of the Parliament Bill, which is currently waiting for its second reading. While not a silver-bullet, the law change would enable Wilson to make a case directly to Parliament for sufficient resourcing to deal with the increased scale of submissions, and not rely on the discretion of the Minister of Finance. Double the scrutiny, half the resource The current session of Parliament changed how select committees scrutinised Government spending and performance. This included the introduction of two dedicated scrutiny weeks a year (one for Estimates and one for Annual Review), longer hearings and cross examinations, and more for committees to report. All that extra scrutiny increases labour and time costs. Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March expressed concern about whether Parliament has the resources to do justice to the new arrangements. "The feedback we have received [is] that there's a genuine trade-off that happens with increased scrutiny and ability to produce substantive reports," he said. Wilson said it's a matter of priorities. "More so than previously, there is the need to weigh up where the energy and attention of the committee and therefore the staff are going to focus... If you're doubling the amount of time spent on scrutiny, there's not double the amount of resource to support that," he said. Other than hoping for respite from the Parliament Bill's new funding mechanism, MPs could also propose changes to Parliament's rules and processes in the Standing Orders Review, which happens at the end of each Parliamentary term. That would be expected to occur in 2026. Brownlee, who chairs the Standing Orders Committee, suggested this as a method for countering the increased strain on Parliament's staff and resources. He told MPs on Wednesday the trend is that there are more submissions on all bills at the moment than there has been in the past. "I think it's for the Standing Orders Committee of Parliament to make some decisions around that, so if you've got some ideas, then feed them in," Brownlee said. * RNZ's The House, with insights into Parliament, legislation and issues, is made with funding from Parliament's Office of the Clerk.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who voted for the SAVE Act? Washington state Democrat votes with US House Republicans
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on April 10 that would require people to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act passed 220-208, mostly along party lines. Only a handful of Democrats, including a Washington state representative, voted in favor of the bill. The bill aligns with concerns President Donald Trump raised in a March executive order about noncitizens registering and voting in federal elections. It's already illegal for noncitizens to vote in state, federal, and most local elections. Four Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives split with their party and voted "yea" for the SAVE Act, according to the Office of the Clerk. They were: Ed Case: Representing Hawaii's 1st Congressional District Henry Cuellar: Representing Texas' 28th Congressional District Jared Golden: Representing Maine's 2nd Congressional District Marie Gluesenkamp Perez: Representing Washington state's 3rd Congressional District Gluesenkamp Perez, who represents Southwest Washington, said her vote for the SAVE Act "reflects" her belief that voting in U.S. elections "is a sacred right belonging only to American citizens." "I also understand the SAVE Act stands no chance of passage in the Senate due to the filibuster, as well as several deeply flawed provisions," Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement. "Democracy depends on confidence in our elections, so I encourage House Leadership to instead consider bipartisan legislation that can pass both chambers of Congress – such as my Let America Vote Act, which reaffirms that decisions made for our country are made by citizens of our country, without placing bureaucratic hassles on U.S. citizens or hardworking election workers." Gluesenkamp Perez also said she is "deeply concerned" about a section in Trump's executive order about not counting properly postmarked vote-by-mail ballots received after Election Day. "This provision conflicts with our state's longstanding, secure vote-by-mail system and could undermine the votes of more than 250,000 Washington citizens whose ballots were legally counted after Election Day in the last election," Gluesenkamp Perez said. "I'm confident Washington state's vote-by-mail system is safe, secure, and reliable and will remain so, thanks to the dedicated local public servants who administer our elections." Gluesenkamp Perez is a Democrat who was elected in a district that Trump won in 2024, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. There were 16 such "crossover districts" in which people voted for one party for president and another for the House. She represents a "rural, working-class district" and "has frequently broken with her party on major votes," the New York Times reported. No. No Republican U.S. House of Representatives members voted against the SAVE Act, according to the Office of the Clerk. The bill would still need to be passed in the Senate to become law, where Republicans control chambers 53-47. However, at least seven Democrats must join Republicans in approving the bill to overcome the chamber's 60-vote threshold. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the SAVE Act "would require everyone registering to vote to provide a document verifying citizenship. It would then require states to enhance voter list maintenance programs to identify noncitizens who have inadvertently gotten on the rolls – if they don't have such practices in place already." The House passed a similar bill in 2024, but it "stalled in the Senate," the NCSL said. Contributing: Riley Beggin and Deborah Berry, USA TODAY This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez joins US House Republicans in SAVE Act vote
