Comment by kelseyfrog
6 hours ago
Such a requirement would not do what you think it would. There would not be names legislator or even aids as commit authors. The commit authors would be members of the House Office of the Legislative Counsel[1].
The House Office of the Legislative Counsel is non-partisan, impartial, and confidential. Whether transparency has merit or not, tracking provenance would make the office partisan. Is more partisanship in government not a concern?
The second issue with transparency is that communication between legislators and legislative counsel member is subject to the attorney-client relationship. Breaking attorney-client privilege is a serious decision. Knowing how such a change would affect the organization and its members is not something to be taken lightly.
A more convincing argument for transparency would address impartiality and confidentiality. This is pretty clearly a Chesterton's fence type situation where advocating to change a system should anticipate criticisms. Addressing opposition preemptively is an implicit demonstration of knowing why the system exists which is table stakes for changing it.
> Whether transparency has merit or not, tracking provenance would make the office partisan.
Tracking who added what language is in no way partisan.
Agreed, that is just a factual error. One has to wonder about the motivation of that statement.
It's like the people that complain their favoured politician has more scrutiny on them when actually that politician just commits lots of crimes.
The authors are lobbyists of big corporations nowadays.
This is why I believe we should do something else than elections of politicians.
Go on?
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