Demo bills usually go nowhere

Being a Democrat in the Utah House can't be good for the ego.

They lose many more battles than they win, mainly because they are outnumbered 56-19 by Republicans, almost three-to-one.

A study by the Deseret Morning News shows that during the 2005 and 2006 Legislatures, those few House Democrats passed into law only 22 percent of the bills they introduced — one of the worst success ratios since the newspaper started keeping running bill tallies more than a decade ago.

House Republicans, meanwhile, enjoyed a vastly higher 51 percent success ratio.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats fared better than their counterparts in the House, passing 42 percent of their bills over the two years of the 56th Utah Legislature. But, again, Senate Republicans did even better yet, passing 64 percent of their bills.

House Democrats suffered their worst showing ever — especially in the 2006 Legislature that just finished, during which only 18 percent of their bills were enacted.

In past two years, nine of every 10 bills adopted by the Legislature were introduced by Republicans.

"We did poorly," acknowledged Rep. Jackie Biskupski, D-Salt Lake, who sits on the House's powerful Rules Committee, which decides when and by whom bills are heard.

"In some cases, the Republicans just don't like our bills" because of what the legislation would accomplish, said Biskupski, who ranked as the second-most-successful House Democrat, with a 38 percent success rate over two years. Examples of Democratic bills that didn't appeal to Republicans were a slew of ethics reform bills and a bill seeking to raise the minimum wage.

"But it is more than that ... (Republican) leaders were just very Scrooge-like" in letting Democratic-sponsored bills be heard in the House in both this year's and last year's 45-day general sessions, Biskupski said.

The Morning News' most-effective/least-effective biennial analyses, started in 1990, are unpopular with some lawmakers. The newspaper did not do an analysis in 2004, but restarted the project this year in an effort to give voters as much candidate information as possible for the upcoming election.

But legislators say that even though they are elected in part to make good law, they don't believe their bills-passed ratios are an adequate measurement of their overall work, which includes voting, fighting bills they dislike, pushing constituents' concerns and committee work.