Via Stand With Texas Women/Facebook

The Texas House of Representatives’ House Research Organization (HRO) releases a “Daily Floor Report” summarizing the bills and testimony presented before the House or its committees. The House has been in recess since the second special session started, although the State Affairs Committee held a hearing on the resurrected anti-abortion bill, HB2, last Tuesday, July 2. The Daily Floor Report for July 9, 2013 (PDF file) has a summary of that hearing, and it demonstrates a sneaky way of making it appear, at least superficially, that your bill has more support than it actually does (h/t Arthur).

Beginning on page 1 (the first page after the cover sheet), the report lists witnesses testifying “for” the bill, “against” the bill, and “on” the bill. It lists three pages of witnesses supporting the bill and one page of witnesses opposing it. The report also identifies one person who testified “on” the bill, Ellen Cooper of the Department of State Health Services.

Based on that, you might think that far more people testified in support of HB2 than in opposition to it, right? You might be excused, at first glance, for thinking that three times as many people testified for it as against it.

You would be wrong about that.

At the end of the three-page-long list of HB2 supporters, the report states that “about 1,090 others” signed up to testify in support of the bill. Most of them did not get to deliver their testimony to the committee in person, of course, since the hearing might still be going on a week later if they had. Still, three pages of names plus 1,090 more is quite a lot of people.

How many more signed up to testify in addition to the one page of names testifying against HB2? At the end of that much-shorter list, the report states that “about 2,060 others” signed up to testify against HB2.

According to the Texas Tribune, a roughly equal number of people testified for and against the bill. I suspect the HRO is not accustomed to writing such lengthy lists of witnesses, but that still does not explain the different page lengths. The scale of the testimony on Sunday, June 23 does not even come close to last Tuesday, and the Daily Floor Report (PDF file) for that day clearly indicates that more people signed up to testify against that bill than for it.

Wherever you stand on the issue of abortion, this sort of game-playing should not be acceptable.

Maybe Daily Floor Reports are subject to a page number limit. That is about the only honest reason I can think of at the moment for why the report is set up this way, but even that would not explain why the HRO cut off the list of opponents when it could have shortened the list of supporters.

The chair of the steering committee for the House Research Organization is Rep. Bill Callegari (R-Houston). I sent Rep. Callegari the following request for information through his Facebook page:

Dear Rep. Callegari,

I am a resident of Austin, Texas, and I have been researching and writing about the events surrounding HB2, SB9, and the related bills pending in the Legislature. I am not affiliated with any news or media organization. I have a question regarding the Daily Floor Report released today, July 9.

The report summarizes the State Affairs Committee hearing on HB2 that took place last week, and includes lists of people who registered to testify for and against the bill. According to news reports, only about 100 people were able to give live testimony to the committee, with about an equal number of people testifying in support of and in opposition to the bill. Today’s Daily Floor Report lists three pages’ worth of supporters’ names, then adds that about 1,090 more people signed up to testify in support of HB2. It then lists one page of opponents’ names, and adds that about 2,060 more people signed up to testify against the bill.

My question is as follows: why did the report list so many more names of supporters than opponents, when more people signed up to testify against the bill than for it, and roughly equal numbers of people actually testified to the committee on either side of the issue? Your attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

I’ll update if I hear anything back.