How Many Amendments did Senators File?

Curious about how many amendments the Senators filed?  It turns out quite a few.  First of all, as most of you know there are only 40 Senators, while there are 160 Representatives. This year the house filed about a thousand floor amendments -- just shy of a thousand at first, then a few more in the end -- which works out to be a little more than six amendments per representative.

On the other hand, the Senators filed 647 amendments -- before the additional 47 that were posted on the Senate website late this afternoon -- which works out to be a little over 16 amendments per Senator.

Still, some were greedier than others.  The table below sets forth the number of amendments per Senator, including those filed jointly by combinations of Senators.

As you can see, John Hart leads the pack with 56 followed closely by Tisei at 51.  McGee, Creem and Tarr are in the thirties, with Spilka and Tolman following close behind.

Senate Amendments Posted

The Senate posted their amendments this weekend.  The Senate has a bit of an awkward way of doing this. Instead of publishing an entire list of amendments which links to the individual amendments -- as the House does -- the Senate publishes their amendments bundled into thirteen topic areas.  This might be seen like the consolidated amendments acted on in the House during floor debate, only that the Senate doesn't do multiple consolidated amendments the way the House does. The Senate allows much more debate on individual amendments, and usually bundles the remaining amendments together in one big bundle at the end of the session.  At least that's what they did last year.  So what is the purpose of the bundles?

In order to get a list of the Senate amendments, you have to agglomerate each of the bundles together and then try to sort them on amendment number.  It's a lot more work than it should be, frankly, to get a clean picture of what's going on.

Senate Ways & Means Budget Appropriations

The Senate came out with it's budget today, and it seems to have been the first body to take the budget crunch seriously.  As you can see from the table below, the Senate's numbers are significantly lower than those of the Governor and House, and last year's enacted budget.

FY09 as Enacted .........................$29,666,643,801
Governor's House 1 ......................$30,870,720,678
House Ways & Means ......................$29,351,895,971
House Engroseed .........................$29,826,325,083
Senate Ways & Means .....................$27,415,399,490

The chart below demonstrates this graphically,  including the portions devoted to direct appropriations, chargebacks, retained revenue and federal grants respectively:

That means that what the Senate has proposed is:

• $2,251,244,311 less than last year's enacted budget
  
• $3,455,321,188 less than what the Governor proposed in House 1
  
• $1,936,496,481 less than House Ways & Means
  
• $2,410,925,593 less than the House Engrossed budget
  

Click here to see the entire spreadsheet of SW&M appropriations and how they compare to previous versions of budgets.

What's with all the Secrecy?

On Tuesday we all were waiting for the Senate Ways & Means budget to come out, as it had been rumored it would.  What happened?  Nothing, nothing at all.  Although I refreshed my browser every hour, nothing happened all day long.  One of my colleagues even called the committee, but they refused to divlulge the time or even date the budget would be released.

What's the big secrecy?  I thought we were now in the era of budget transparency?  In my day, when I was at the Committee -- which admittedly was a while ago -- we had a grand unveiling of the budget.  We would schedule an executive committee hearing, print up charts and graphs, invite the press, and actually present the budget.  The Ways & Means committee would actually taken questions from the press.

How about that as an idea?

Who had the most Amendments Adopted?

Now that the voting and debating is over, let's see who scored well in terms of getting amendments passed and additions made to the budget.

First of all, with respect to the number of amendments that were adopted, the runaway winner was Charlie Murphy himself, although that statistic is deceptive.  Murphy, who barely filed any amendements himself, was listed as the lead sponsor on thirteen of the items in the "consolidated" floor amendments.

Next in line were John Scibak, Liz Malia, Harold Naughton and Alice Wolf, who each managed to have eight of their amendments adopted, albeit in modified form.  The table below only lists Representatives who had at least three amendments adopted.

Action  Sponsor                Count
------------------------------------
Adopted Murphy et al              13
Adopted Scibak, John               8
Adopted Malia, Liz                 7
Adopted Naughton, Harold           7
Adopted Wolf, Alice                7
Adopted O'Flaherty, Gene           6
Adopted Smizik, Frank              5
Adopted Costello, Michael          5
Adopted Jones, Bradley             5
Adopted Guyer, Denis               4
Adopted Webster, Daniel            4
Adopted O'Day, James               4           
Adopted Reinstein, Kathi Anne      4
Adopted Peisch, Alice              3
Adopted Khan, Kay                  3
Adopted Rodrigues, Michael         3
Adopted Pedone, Vincent            3
Adopted Walsh, Martin              3
Adopted Spellane, Robert           3
Adopted Scaccia, Angelo            3

Final House Floor Amendments

Now that the numbers are in, it appears that the House was unusually restrained in it's floor debate. Speaker DeLeo had said in his closing remarks that he doesn't know anybody who "enjoys saying no" more than new House Ways & Means Chairman Charles Murphy. Well that's a good thing because the House needed to be restrained and it looks like they actually succeeded. Our numbers indicate as follows:

• The House adopted only 172 amendments
• Of these only a paltry 44 amendment were earmarks
• The total number of earmarks adopted is around $137.9 million
• The total increase in the budget appears to be around $475 million

Click here to bring up  a spreadsheet with the complete list of adopted amendments from last week's house floor activity.

Which Amendments made it into the Bundles?

If you're like the rest of us, you might think it would be useful to know which of the 1003 odd House floor amendments -- not counting the half-dozen or so brand new ones that were adopted on the House floor -- actually made it into one of the 23 bundles (or "consolidated" amendments).  Damn if you would know by looking at the House website, however.  Here's what you can see from the House website:

Notice that the first House amendment, Puppolo's "Springfield Business Improvement District" earmark is indicated as having been "Consolidated "V" Economic Development".  The unsuspecting reader might believe this meant that was adopted.  Not so, my friends.

If you want to know which amendments really were adopted (and which were excluded through the "non-action" of having been "disposed" of in one of the consolidated amendments without any of the language from the amendment showing up in the amendment, you'd have to go to a different source, like ours.

Click here if you want to see a complete list of what happened to all the House floor amendments, and which ones actually made it into one of the bundles.

How do we do this? The old fashioned way: we know which subject matter each amendment was assigned to, and we can get the consolidated amendment in PDF format when it's posted on the web.  The House is good enough to post these, usually within half an hour of voting on them.  And you can find them youself here, by clicking on this link.

The house does list the withdrawn amendment, as well as supplying links to each of the consolidated amendments, and the "further amended" amendments that were eventually adopted.

Day 2 of House Floor Debate

Day 2 is now in the books as well. Today was focused primarily on Local Aid. The House took the eleven Local Aid related amendments and consolidated them into one amendment. Introduced by HW&M Chair Charles Murphy, the amendments added $201,518,000 to the total Local Aid amounts, which represents a 9.85% from what was recommended in the House Ways & Means Budget.

Municipality          HWM           HFA      Difference   Percent
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Boston           $381,036,934  $419,732,904  $38,695,970  110.16%
Springfield      $308,828,796  $314,936,638   $6,107,842  101.98%
Worcester        $232,138,653  $237,690,023   $5,551,370  102.39%
Cambridge         $27,415,591   $32,758,350   $5,342,759  119.49%
Fall River       $113,777,201  $118,737,443   $4,960,242  104.36%
Somerville        $40,986,924   $45,903,924   $4,917,000  112.00%
Lynn             $138,213,147  $142,423,920   $4,210,773  103.05%
New Bedford      $134,076,565  $137,771,923   $3,695,358  102.76%
Lowell           $144,817,216  $148,449,150   $3,631,934  102.51%
Quincy            $36,576,805   $40,202,290   $3,625,485  109.91%
Lawrence         $159,656,619  $163,039,138   $3,382,519  102.12%
Brockton         $153,099,146  $156,098,062   $2,998,916  101.96%

Click here to see a complete list of the House Floor Amendments for Local Aid, compared to what House Ways & Means recommeded.

The biggest winner by far was the City of Boston (see above), which added a whopping $38,695,970 to their total. Of course, the city had also seen it's biggest decrease in the HW&M budget from last year. Percentage-wise, the biggest winner was tiny Aquinnah (a.k.a. Gay Head), which saw a 132.98% increase in it's Local Aid contribution.

Day 1 of House Floor Debate

So, day 1 of the House Floor Debate is in the books.  What was accomplished today?  Not much other than the on-going debate on the sales tax increase.  Our guys are a little boxed in on income taxes, of course, given that in the last couple of election cycles the electorate almost repealed the income tax altogether.  The electorate at least has signaled a clear desire to get the income tax back down to its original 5%.

The Governor sent a letter to the Legislature yesterday telling them that he would veto the sales tax increase if the Legislature was not serious about the reform agenda that the Governor has proposed, including reform of the state pension system and, most importantly, the Commonwealth's transportation system.  On this point I have to agree with the Governor.

So, last night the House used Rep. Carl Sciortino's proposed sales tax amendment (see amendment #717) as the vehicle for raising the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.  They apparently counted enough votes to get a veto-proof majority of 108 votes (one more than the 107 needed) to go for the increase.  The roll call vote has, of course, not yet been made available. but we'll post it when it is.  Other than that, and no surprise here, the House didn't accomplish much.  If the 1003 amendments, they've so far dealt with thirteen: two adopted, two rejected, six withdrawn, two precluded because of other action, and one laid on the side.

How many Amendments did Representatives File?

The House posted the floor amendments yesterday and the good news is that they came in just under a thousand.  Last year House members filed 1512 amendments, this shows unusual restraint on their part.  With 160 members filing just under a thousand amendments, that means the average member filed 6.25 amendments.  Still, some were more aggresive than others.

The table below sets forth a list of House members and the number of amendments that they filed.

Benjamin Swan heads up the list, having filed 40 amendments all by himself.  Bradley Jones, William Lantigua, Cheryl Coakley-Rivera (last year's champion), Gene O'Flaherty and Martin Walsh all hit the twenties.  On the other end of the spectrum, a half dozen Representatives only filed one amendment apiece.  Now that's restraint.  Or maybe indifference.  Who knows?

The Budget Amendment Process

So, how does the amendment process work anyway.  In a nutshell, once the Ways and Means Committees report the budget on the House and Senate side, the other members of the House and Senate get their crack at the budget.  There are 160 Representatives and 40 Senators.  During a typical budget season, the House will debate the budget on the floor for an entire week, normally the week after House Ways and Means has released the budget. The 160 members typically file between 1000 and 1600 amendments, or about a half dozen to ten apiece.  Some file more, some file fewer.  

On the Senate side the numbers are lower, as the Senators typically file under a thousand floor amendments.  Of course, with only 400 of them, that means that they can each put about twenty in the can.  One of the perks of being a Senator.  The Senate Floor debate is usually a little shorter, often wrapping up after three days (as opposed to five for the House).

Now, it is axiomatic that neither body can really debate 1000, let alone 1500 amendments. That would take more like a year than a week.  As a consequence, what happens in practice is that amendments get bundled.  Especially on the House side, probably 95% of the amendments get thrown in a bundle, and only 5% actually get debated.  On the Senate side, the number that gets debated is a little higher.

The Ways & Means Committees, with some input from the individual members, put together the bundles.  The way it used to work is this:

• The Ways & Means Committee put together "yes" and "no" piles.
• A member could pull a cherished amendment from the "no" pile and have it debated individually.
• Most of the time, these individually-debated amendments were voted down.

I don't know if it still works this way.  What the House now does is to take the bundled amendments, rewrite them (often with a different number for the earmark or the increase) and simply propose the bundle as one "consolidated" amendment.

House Ways & Means Budget Recommendations

The House Ways & Means Committee reported it's budget for FY 2010 today.  Your intrepid budget watcher has run the numbers, and here's how they look:

FY09:  $29,669,583,970
GOV:   $30,872,229,255
HWM:   $29,345,431,975

Click here to see a full spreadsheet with a complete comparison of every line-item from FY09 (Chapter 182 of the Acts of 1988), House 1 (the Governor's recommendation), and House 4100 (the House Ways & Means recommendation).

This means the following:

• The Governor proposed a budget that was $1,202,645,285 over the level of the FY09 Budget.  This amounts to a 104.05% increase from FY09.

• The House Ways & Means Committee has proposed a budget which is -$324,151,995 less than the FY09 budget.  This represents a decrease of 98.91% from the FY09 levels.
  

However, keep in mind that these numbers are BEFORE the Governor's 9C cuts, which he made in October of 2008 and January of 2009.

Here is my question: I keep hearing that the sky is falling, and that the Commonwealth needs to make drastic budget cuts from previous fiscla years.  Honestly, I don't see it.  I'm not sure I understand how these proposals reflect a drastic reduction in the size of state government.