Brady Scrubbing The ILGA Website?
Sen. Bill Brady's campaign caught a considerable amount of flack yesterday for replacing factual policy positions on its candidate's Wikipedia page with a series of canned talking points. Unfortunately, it seems the online encyclopedia isn't the only website the Brady campaign is scrubbing. And this new allegation is far more serious.
Mark E. Wojcik, a law professor at the John Marshall Law School, penned a letter to the editor in the Windy City Times yesterday alleging that someone is trying to shield the public from Brady's position on gay rights. The letter states that someone got the folks who run the Illinois General Assembly's website to remove Brady's name as chief co-sponsor of a proposed constitutional amendment (SJRCA 95) that would have prohibited the state from recognizing same-sex marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnership. If coordinated, the effort was successful; Brady's name is listed at the top of the amendment's "Full Text" as having introduced the measure but does not show up on the "Bill Status" section at all. We called officials from both Illinois' Legislative Information Services and the Senate Journal, which controls the website. Neither office knew how such a slip-up could happen and both said that the website should reflect his sponsorship. "Oh my, that should not be," exclaimed one of the women we talked with. We're still waiting for a response from another Senate Journal official, who is on vacation until Monday. (We will report any more information we hear.) But the evidence seems pretty clear; Bill Brady doesn't want voters in Illinois to know his arch-conservative social positions and his campaign is going to great lengths to hide them.
UPDATE (7/30): The Capitol Fax dug into this story as well and offers a plausible explanation. As it turns out, the State Senate never includes the original sponsor’s name in the "Bill Action" section of resolutions, which would include constitutional amendments. It's not clear why they do that but it appears to be standard practice. While the Wikiepdia controversy was real, voters can ignore this one entirely.
Although the State Senate doesn't include the original sponsor's name in the "Bill Action" section of the ILGA website, the Senate normally DOES include the sponsor's name just above that.
With one exception: Brady's same-sex constitutional amendment.
Consider this:
On February 10, 2010, Senator Bill Brady filed the following FIVE Senate Joint Resolutions to amend the Illinois State Constitution:
• SJRCA95 (to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships)
• SJRCA96 (on legislative redistricting)
• SJRCA97 (on the number of votes needed to pass revenue bills)
• SJRCA98 (on term limits)
• SJRCA100 (on biennial budgets)
Brady’s name appears as the sponsor on each of those resolutions except resolution SJRCA95, which would prohibit recognition of same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships. As shown by the original pdf of the resolution, Brady introduced that resolution by himself on February 10, 2010.
Normally (as shown by the other four resolutions introduced that day) Brady’s name would appear on the Illinois General Assembly website as the resolution’s sponsor. Go to the ILGA website and look for yourself -- Brady's name appears as the sponsor of each of those other bills.
But the Illinois General Assembly doesn’t include Brady's name for SJRCA95. And normally (as shown again by each of the other resolutions) someone searching for legislation introduced by Brady would be able to click on his name and find that resolution along with the other ones he introduced on February 10, 2010. But the Illinois General website will give you only the other resolutions when you click on Brady's name.
Is there any explanation for this? Well, a week after Brady introduced his resolution to amend the Illinois State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Senator John Jones (R-Mt. Vernon) was “added as chief co-sponsor.” But adding Jones as a "co-sponsor" simply meant that both he and Brady were co-sponsors of the bill. Brady's name should still have appeared as the sponsor. And on March 2, the Illinois General Assembly website changed his status to “chief sponsor.” But nowhere does it show that Brady—who introduced the bill—ever withdrew as a sponsor.
Rich Miller of Capitol Fax thinks that all of this is much ado about nothing because, as he correctly notes, the sponsors of senate joint resolutions are never listed in the chart that shows when the bill was filed. The only reason why they are not listed there appears to be becasue they are already otherwise listed right above that box. Again, have a look at the other resolutions introduced and you will see that the names of senate sponsors appear at the top of that legislative history page.
I find it hard to believe it is somehow an accident that Brady’s name was removed from that list of sponsors. If Brady withdrew as the sponsor (and later co-sponsor) of that bill, the legislative history would indicate that withdrawal. Here it doesn’t.
This is far from being a non-issue. Playing games with the public record to hide a candidate’s extreme positions does a great disservice to the voters of Illinois.
Prof. Mark E. Wojcik
The John Marshall Law School