There’s been rumors about how annoyed House Democrats were about getting fobbed off with second tier committee assignments. But it seems that Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, isn’t going to give Speaker Joe Straus a break until he gets off either Corrections or Public Education.
Today the Houston Dem brought back the issue of committee chairs when he asked whether he could appeal the ruling that members couldn’t swap assignments, and what rules applied. Straus said no dice and called the selections “a ministerial act of the chair.”
Still nowhere near good enough for Dutton, who made a motion to reconsider the speaker’s decision. The discussion even got as far as which mic he would have to use to request an appeal. It’s complex (the ruling, not the mic choice) and seems to lie in the blurry lines between the rules, and so it’s been bounced over to Parliamentarian Denise Davis overnight.
If this sounds like opaque procedure, well, it is. But with the House so finely balanced, and both Democrats and Republicans looking hard at the power now in the hands of the Gang of 11, the line between opaque procedure and bloody internecine war is narrow.
This article appears in February 20 • 2009.
