Knesset committees could get more leeway to kill legislation

The chairman of the Knesset House Committee on Tuesday will present a series of wide-ranging reforms to the legislative procedure, which includes giving committees rather than the plenum the authority to decide whether bills are brought to a first vote.

The proposal by Likud MK David Bitan would also allow the House Committee to cap the number of bills presented in the plenum, or submitted to the Knesset at all.

Currently, lawmakers may bring private legislation (that is, bills that are not spearheaded by the coalition, or submitted by ministers or deputy ministers) to a debate in the plenum, which is followed by a preliminary vote. If it passes, the bill is subsequently sent to committee to prepare it for a first reading. The bill must be approved in three votes to become law. Government-backed legislation is exempt from this preliminary vote.

Bitan will recommend the Knesset do away with the preliminary plenum vote entirely. Lawmakers will be allowed to present legislation to the Knesset plenum for five minutes, some 14 days after they formally filed it, without a vote and without a response from a coalition representative, as is procedure today.

The private bills will then be sent to the relevant committee. “The committee to which the proposal was sent will decide whether to remove the bill from the agenda, or to prepare it for a first reading,” the proposal says. Committee members will be notified at least three days in advance of an upcoming vote on the legislation in question, and a tie will result in striking the bill, it stipulates.

If the bill has been torpedoed in committee, the plenum will be notified, but will not have the option to vote on reviving it. To avoid a backlog, Bitan’s proposal maintains that if the committee does not vote on the bill within 90 days, it can be transferred to another committee which will then have 45 days to come to a decision.

If approved, the bill must be filed 30 days before the first reading (unless the coalition supports it, or the House Committee grants it special permission, in which case it may be expedited). In an effort to stave off partisanship in the committees, Bitan suggests that the coalition be barred from formulating its position on the private bills until it is filed for a first reading. “Prior to this, representatives from the government will help prepare the bill, professionally, without the government’s stance,” it says.

The proposed reforms would also allow every lawmaker to appear twice a year before the Ministerial Committee for Legislation to make their case for the bill they are spearheading. An okay by the ministerial panel, led by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, requires the coalition to vote in favor of the bill.

In addition to these changes, the proposals suggest the House Committee be allowed to limit the number of bills submitted altogether.

According to the Israel Democracy Institute, over 2,500 bills have been filed in the past 11 months.

Bitan will bring his proposal to a debate in the Knesset House Committee Tuesday.