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NINA STOOD UP FOR ALL OF US to fight ban on ESCR in Texas:

Being kept in the dark
Legislature: Hearings that go late into night cut down on witnesses

12:00 AM CDT on Monday, May 7, 2007
By EMILY RAMSHAW / The Dallas Morning News
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AUSTIN - For a person with Parkinson's disease, the trip itself was
grueling - a 160-mile drive to Austin to protest a bill banning state
funding of stem cell research before a House committee.
  Heather Burcham, a stage 4 cervical cancer patient, waited and waited on
Feb. 19 to speak in favor of mandatory human papilloma virus vaccinations.
Finally, after having been told for three hours that she would be the next
to speak, she gave up and left. But once Nina Brown of suburban Houston got
to the Capitol, she had to wait about 10 hours for the State Affairs meeting
to start, and about four more to testify. By that point - about 2 a.m. - her
motor skills were so far gone she had to be lifted to the podium to speak.
"I'm so passionately involved with this issue that I was willing to risk my
health to be there," said Mrs. Brown, who, despite a two-decade battle with
the debilitating disease, stayed at the meeting until it adjourned - at 5:21
a.m. "I don't think I've ever been up that late. For most people, how can
they stay?"
Critics of the Legislature's committee system say lawmakers are practicing
democracy after dark, delaying votes on hot issues until the last,
late-night minute, and dragging out favorable testimony to silence
opposition.
The committee process - where bills are first heard, debated and amended -
is so unpredictable that the process at the very least raises questions of
equal access in some observers' minds.
Who other than a paid lobbyist can afford to sit at the Capitol all day and
night, waiting for a loosely scheduled meeting to begin? Who other than
Austin insiders will know when a bill will be taken out of order or voted on
unexpectedly? And how many people with children, day jobs or serious health
conditions can drive across the state on short notice and wait until 4 a.m.
to testify?
Committee chairs call this criticism preposterous. They agree the hearings
and unpredictable schedules can be inconvenient - they don't like to be up
until 5:20 a.m., either - but they say it's simply the nature of the
legislative beast.
Committee members work around the schedules of the full House and Senate,
and they can't control when those meetings begin or end. They're committed
to taking testimony from everyone who wants to speak, which is why many of
the meetings run on ... and on. And the late-night testimony isn't reserved
for people on the losing side of a bill, they say - it's generally
first-come, first-served.
Keeping late hours
Almost every committee can expect a few late-night meetings while the
Legislature is in session.
The Senate Criminal Justice Committee spent close to 10 hours on the Texas
Youth Commission in March. A House Human Services committee meeting on Child
Protective Services in February lasted more than 11 hours. And the House
Natural Resources Committee took testimony on reservoirs one night last
month until 3:20 a.m.
But the House State Affairs Committee - the clearinghouse for many of the
Legislature's hotly contested bills, including those on abortion rights and
stem cell research - consistently wins the award for the longest and latest
meetings.
So far this session, the panel has had six meetings run past midnight and
four meetings that lasted more than 10 hours. A March hearing on residential
construction rules lasted close to 12 hours, ending at 3:54 a.m. An 11-hour
meeting on abortion bills this month adjourned at 4:15 a.m.
And a nearly eight-hour stem cell hearing - the one Mrs. Brown attended -
ran until 5:21 a.m.
Lawmakers said they had little choice. The meeting began around 8 a.m.,
recessed about 9 a.m. when the full House met and didn't reconvene until
almost 11 p.m. Chairman David Swinford had to choose who would testify
first: opponents and advocates of state funded stem cell research or
exhausted elementary-age children waiting to speak about religious freedom
in school.
The school bill, a holdover from the previous week, was heard first - what
Mr. Swinford, R-Dumas, has called a "grandfather decision" - even though it
wasn't originally on the committee docket. Mrs. Brown and other stem cell
research advocates have accused Mr. Swinford of purposely pulling the school
item onto the agenda and allowing the kids to speak with no time limit to
delay stem cell testimony.
"It had to be intentional. I can't understand why [the kids] would be
brought in at that time, when they could've been brought in on any other
day," said Mrs. Brown, 65, the vice president for the Texas Parkinson's
Action Network. "It was a blatant political move to prevent those in
attendance from having a fair hearing."
Mr. Swinford vehemently denies that.
Although he had hoped the meeting would start earlier, he said, the State
Affairs Committee prides itself on letting everyone who's made the effort to
attend speak without a time limit. This applies to children as well.
"My policy is, if they come, they will be heard," Mr. Swinford said.
And, he said, as often as people complain about the length of a hearing,
they thank committee members for being so thorough. At a 2005 hearing on a
constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the committee took testimony
from 998 people, Mr. Swinford said, starting at 2 p.m. and ending at 9:30
the next morning. Even though opponents of the gay marriage ban knew
committee members had decided against them, he said, they still thanked them
for allowing everyone to speak.
Time limits
Opponents say they have no problem with allowing everyone to testify. They
just want reasonable time limits for testimony, weekend meetings on the most
controversial issues and special consideration for people with special
circumstances.
Like 31-year-old Heather Burcham, who, with stage 4 cervical cancer, made
the arduous trek from Houston in February for a House Public Health hearing
about mandatory human papilloma vaccinations for Texas schoolgirls.
When the meeting started at 7 p.m., lawmakers, who overwhelmingly favored a
bill to block Gov. Rick Perry's executive order for the vaccines, knew Ms.
Burcham was in the audience. Mr. Perry's office had arranged a media
briefing with her that morning, and TV cameras in the hearing room were
trained on her.
But after three hours of being told she was next in line to speak - and
multiple requests from Mr. Perry's staffers that she be taken out of order -
Ms. Burcham still hadn't been called to testify. At 10 p.m., doubled over in
pain and hardly able to keep her eyes open, Ms. Burcham left without
testifying.
James Cooley, a spokesman for Public Health chairman Dianne Delisi, said the
committee's longstanding tradition is to allow expert witnesses invited by
the bill's author to testify first.
He said once lawmakers learned of Ms. Burcham's condition, she was moved up
the list to follow the expert witnesses - but those individuals testified
for close to three hours.
"There was a request, and she was moved up," Mr. Cooley said. "She was
called just a few minutes after she left."
Of late, Mr. Cooley said, the committee has begun using a timer to keep
testimony to a reasonable length. And at a recent hearing on when hospitals
should be able to remove a terminal patient's care, he said, a few mothers
with young kids in the audience were moved up to speak before anyone else.
That meeting, on April 25, ran 10 hours, until after 5 a.m.
The committee meetings are generally a lost cause for people who live far
away or work regular, 9-to-5 jobs, said Tom "Smitty" Smith, Texas director
of the advocacy group Public Citizen.
"They can't participate in democracy with that kind of schedule," he said.
But late meetings are no walk in the park for lobbyists either. Mr. Smith
left a 2001 hearing at 5:20 a.m., he said, and returned to the same hearing
room three hours later to find a lobbyist asleep in his suit on the floor.
"At some point, you have to question whether it's really designed to drive
away witnesses," he said.
Staff writer Amy Rosen contributed to this report.

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