In recent years, any House or Senate member may come into an open Rules Committee and stare down committee members voting to hold up his bill and not letting it out for debate. And that kind of pressure is warping the sifting process, some legislators complain.

House Rules Committee member Kevin Garn, R-Layton, said in recent legislatures the House Rules Committee has not been doing its job as well as it should. Too many questionable bills are coming out of the committee, he said.

Urquhart agreed, saying this 45-day session, "We have to kill some bills in Rules."

The real problem, added Garn, is that the 13 standing committees, which do meet in open and take public comment on bills, are not doing their real jobs of killing unworthy bills. So it falls to the Rules Committee.

It has become "almost automatic" that bills are passed in standing committee and then go to the House floor, Garn said.

Too many bills on the House calendar means important bills get bogged down with frivolous bills and the whole legislative process cramps up because committees are not killing bad bills, Rules Committee members complained.

Hendrickson, first elected in 1990, said he's talked with former Democratic legislators who sat on the Rules Committee when it was closed, and the legislators said it was a much more efficient committee in the old days.

But what about doing the public's business in public?

Hendrickson said all the bills that come out of the Rules Committee are still heard in a public standing committee, and that wouldn't change.

"Please point out this was a Democrat's suggestion," Curtis said.

Democratic legislators and that party's legislative candidates have been some of the most vocal opponents to the closed rules committees and closed party caucuses, professing the majority Republicans were playing games, doing special interests' bidding in the closed meetings.

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