Camilleri Hertel McMorrow Singh
Cavanagh Irwin Moss Wojno
Excused—0
Not Voting—0
In The Chair: Geiss
Protest
Senator Moss, under his constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the adoption of the amendments offered by Senator Nesbitt to Senate Bill No. 670 and moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the amendments be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”
The motion prevailed.
Senator Moss’ statement is as follows:
This was an issue that first came up this year in the committee process. We tried really hard to achieve some of the items that the Republican leader mentioned, but ultimately the hiring of the FOIA coordinator is a nonpartisan personnel decision of who is the most qualified to do the job. This is the same process by which we decide who is the Senate Business Office director and how that person chooses their deputies. It would be unprecedented compared to all levels of government and how they choose their FOIA coordinators, even partisan bodies like county commissions, and most notably this has been the language that has been unchanged after all these many years since we drafted this package years ago. I agree that partisanship has no place to responding to FOIA requests and I’m hopeful we can work to ensure that as we develop chamber rules in future sessions necessary to implement the expansion of FOIA to the Senate. For now, I don’t think it’s appropriate to lock this into the law like this. I would request a “no” vote on this amendment.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: