The person with the lowest rate for floor votes had the excuse of serious illnesses. It was Bowman, who made only 51.5 percent of floor votes. Sen. Bill Hickman, D-St. George, a member of leadership as the Senate Rules Committee chair, was second lowest at 70.9 percent.

Third lowest was Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who was dogged by controversy this year, accused of making racist remarks on the floor. Buttars made only 72 percent of his floor votes. At the height of his problems toward the end of the session, Buttars missed several days of legislative meetings — not casting dozens of votes on the floor.

Fourth lowest was House Speaker Curtis at 72.7 percent. Interestingly, Curtis this year began scheduling meetings in his private office during floor sessions. For years, speakers and other leaders have scheduled private meetings in their offices during committee meetings but stayed on the floor, conducting those sessions. Curtis was off the floor, as it is called, with someone else conducting the floor sessions usually an hour or two in the mornings and often again in the afternoon floor sessions.

Curtis said for some reason a number of the hot issues in the 2008 Legislature had not "matured" before the session started, so he needed to take a personal interest in them — "to get them going" — toward resolution early in the 45-day session, when he was often off the floor in private meetings.

Loophole

Because of busy leaders, an interesting loophole exists in rules about how to achieve legal quorums in standing committees. Standing committees are not required to count party leaders when calculating whether a quorum is present.

So, for example, the Senate Workforce Services and Community and Economic Development Committee has six members — but three are party leaders and so exempt from quorum. So only two of the other three members need to be present to achieve a quorum. And two senators alone could do work.

That committee indeed did cast three votes on bills with just two members present. Also, six of every 10 votes conducted by that committee came with less than a majority of the full committee present.

The loophole allowed 100 votes overall on bills in standing committees without a majority of all members present. That was one of every 16 total votes in those committees.

Some of the standing committees with the highest percentage of such less-than-majority-present votes were the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee, where 22 percent of all votes came without a majority of all members, and the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee, where 21 percent of all votes did.