November 7, 2003
The Honorable Dianne Feinstein BY FAX AND U.S. MAIL
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Constitution Avenue & Second St. NE
Washington, DC 20510
RE: Unrecorded Voice Vote on Iraq Operations and Reconstruction Funding
Dear Senator Feinstein,
We are a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and defending
the people¹s right to know how their government and its officials
advance the public interest‹or not. Our focus to this end is in the
³sunshine² laws, such as the Brown Act and California Public Records
Act at the state and local level, and the Freedom of Information Act
at the federal level.
We fully appreciate that the Congressional branch is subject to none
of these statutes and is constitutionally autonomous in this regard:
free to make its own rules about how publicly it conducts the people¹s
business.
We are dismayed, however, to learn that the Senate decided to conduct
a ³voice vote² to approve the Administration¹s $87 billion Iraq operations
and reconstruction spending request.
National Public Radio¹s senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr, pointed
out in his November 5 ³All Things Considered² commentary,
It was the biggest such emergency appropriation ever sought by a president.
Any of the six senators present could have suggested the absence of
a quorum and called for absent members to return for a recorded vote;
none did. That there would be no recorded vote to provide some future
embarrassment had been worked out in advance by majority and minority
leaders Bill Frist and Tom Daschle.
Schorr observed:
Now if you want to know how your senator voted, or would have voted,
on the multibillion-dollar Iraq package, you'll have to ask him or
her and hope that he or she will tell you.
Senator, no legislative body in California, from the smallest city
council or school board to the Assembly and Senate in Sacramento,
would be allowed to approve the most modest appropriation off the
record, much less one of historic proportions and consequence. The
United States Senate¹s approach to the Iraq spending approval flies
in the face of traditions we have come
to regard as fundamental, and that we soon hope to enshrine in the
state constitution itself, via Senator Burton¹s Senate Constitutional
Amendment 1.
We ask you to disclose your vote on the Iraq funding measure. We also
ask you to sponsor or at least co-sponsor an amendment to the appropriate
Senate rules that would prohibit off-the-record voting on any measure
in the future‹and certainly those involving major and controversial
policy matters.
Sincerely,
Richard McKee
President
California First Amendment Coalition
cc: Vice President Dick Rogers, San Francisco Chronicle
Secretary-Treasurer Mel Opotowsky, Riverside
Immediate Past President Bill Johnson, Palo Alto Weekly
CFAC Directors:
Barbara Blinderman, Attorney, Moskowitz, Brestoff, Winston & Blinderman;
Los Angeles Bruce B. Brugmann, Editor and Publisher, San Francisco
Bay Guardian Thomas Burke, Attorney, Davis Wright Tremaine, San Francisco
Duffy Carolan, Attorney, Davis Wright Tremaine, San Francisco James
M. Chadwick, Attorney, Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich LLP Tim Crews,
Publisher, Sacramento Valley Mirror, Artois James Erickson, Vice President,
University Relations, University of California, Riverside Paul Gullixson,
Santa Rosa Press Democrat Clayton Haswell, California Bureau Chief,
Associated Press Ray Herndon, Los Angeles Times Mike Hoffman, Ventura
County Star Barbara Inatsugu, immediate past president, League of
Women Voters of California Morton I. Levine, Publisher Emeritus Milpitas
Post Sam Matthews, Co- publisher, Tracy Press Joe McConnell, California
Radio and Television News Directors Association Allen McCombs, Publisher,
Chino Champion Diane Park, open government activist, Stockton Rick
Pullen, Dean of the College of Communications, Cal-State, Fullerton
Rowland Rebele, Newspaper Consultant, Aptos Erna Smith, Journalism
Department, San Francisco State University Bob Swofford, Press Democrat,
Santa Rosa Carole Wagner Vallianos, Attorney, Manhattan Beach Martin
Weinberger, Publisher, Claremont Courier Dan Weikel, The Los Angeles
Times
