H.R. 5 House Rules Resolution - House Standing Committees: transcript

House Rules Committee, Feb 4, 2026

1. Committee chair28:05

   We'll move to the second item on our agenda. Uh, HR five House rules resolution, house standing committees. Uh, we have Representative MacPherson here to present that as well. And my understanding is you have a substitute.

2. Rep. Matt MacPherson28:17

   That's right. And, and this is a very tiny bill, the substitute. Um, so initially I was, uh, looking particularly at the education committee and a lot, several other committees that are bogged down quite a bit during the session with, um, tremendous numbers of bills. Um, and, uh, with some policy discussions also on our committee layout altogether. And I'm trying to identify if there's a way to kind of break up the workload somewhat. And one of those opportunities would be to identify a new committee that could be established that might be able to absorb perhaps bills that fall under education call that fall under maybe government operations that might fall under Health and Human services or social, whatever they call that committee now. Um, some of our committees that tend to be very heavily loaded and also set a, um, a policy goal from the house at least that there is an intention to have a committee that's focused on family and that can really, um, try to collect all these bills that really are being focused in this area right now as a high priority. And, uh, can try to coordinate them maybe in a better way than just how they may affect, uh, the different committees that they're in right now. So it's a very simple bill. Again, that just creates the one new committee. It wouldn't go into effect, I don't believe, until next, uh, year, even though it says it go into effect sooner, they need some time to create a space and assign staff and, and it would obviously impact our committee membership. Right now we average about 11 in each committee. Um, and this would likely drop that total the average down to perhaps 10.

3. Committee chair29:55

   Okay. Thank you for that presentation. We'll go to the committee for any clarifying questions. Representative Burton.

4. Rep. Burton30:02

   Thank you, Mr. Chair. This one's really got my attention. Um, so, so from your perspective, um, the need to split that committee is based on, on, on what?

5. Rep. Matt MacPherson30:14

   Um, so this would not be a split of, so the, the, the underlying bill did split education into higher ed and, and, and public ed. But the substitute is actually not looking at splitting the committee. It would actually just simply establish the new committee of Family and social services to try to collect, um, bills that, that would potentially fall under education, whether public or higher or under other committees that tend to be very heavily loaded. Um, and then can help coordinate those bills in a, uh, fashion that the house can kind of clarify that if, if this is a policy consideration, if this is one of our priorities, um, then we can, uh, get them funneled into the same committee and coordinate those better.

6. Rep. Burton31:04

   Okay. Yeah, I just didn't see family committee in this.

7. Rep. Matt MacPherson31:07

   It's in the first sub. The First sub.

8. Rep. Burton31:09

   Okay. That, that's why I didn't see it. Alright. Thank you Mr. Chair.

9. Committee chair31:15

   Thank you Representative Burton further clarifying questions from the committee.

10. Unknown committee member31:20speaker not certain

    Um, I've got a question, um, for you representative. Um, and let me just preface it, um, by saying, I, I think having sat in this chair, right, and working at trying to load balance committees, um, and looking at every, every bill and trying to figure out, okay, where's the right fit? There's, there's a couple things that we're looking for. You know, one is there, each of these committees do have a general subject that they're over. And so we try to make sure that those bills, uh, end up in those committees because that's where the public is looking for them, right? If we send education bills to transportation, they may not be aware of that. They may not testify for it. So we, we want to do that, but we have wide discretion and, and a lot of times there are bills that overlap, right? That, that could be go to a variety of different, uh, committees. But another thing that maybe is a little unspoken and, and, um, I almost hesitate in in mentioning it broadly, But it's about to be spoken. Yeah, It should be spoken, is a lot of times we're looking at who sits on that committee and does that person have the experience, the expertise, um, do they scrutinize bills in a way to make sure that it's, it's fairly vetted by the time it gets through the committee. Um, you know, I wish I had committees full of Representative MacPherson sitting, you know, across the board. Um, but they're not all that way. And some are more interested, some are more engaged, others are less engaged or less interested, especially depending on the topic. And so, uh, one concern that I have is by adding another committee, we're dividing out that that brain power a little bit, and some of these bills may not get scrutinized. And then the second concern that I would have is that, um, just looking at family and social services, I'm kind of racking my brain to say, okay, what would I have sent there instead of education or instead of to, uh, health and human services or judiciary or something. And it seems like it's a pretty small set of bills. And so we're already having a tough time saying, okay, how do we get bills to economic development and workforce services? How do we get utilities? Get them to PUE? Yeah, exactly. Um, where, you know, say business and labor, I mean, half of the bills we could probably assign there and feel really confident because of the 2, 3, 1, it affects business, but two, we've got a lot of, you know, high brain powered, you know, people who sit on that committee who can really scrutinize it and make sure that, that it gets the vetting that it deserves. So, would love your your response to that.

11. Rep. Matt MacPherson33:45

    Yeah. And I appreciate this, and this is actually the number one consideration here is actually trying to solve that issue. Um, and, and I'm sure we've all seen too, is when you're in a committee, when there is sometimes 11 representatives in a committee, it, it actually, I, I think it actually in some ways plays against us, excuse me, against us the most, um, the most focused and and involved members in a committee tend to be the chairs and the vice chairs. Um, they're running the committee. They tend to have to have that. And the more members we tend to have in the committee, it seems like the easier it is to, to not have to necessarily engage a small committee like this, um, uh, tends to be a little bit more capable in my experience, in working with you and others that have these, uh, small, nimble committees that they do have, um, a little bit more focus. And also the other problem that you get with these committees like education or like gov ops occasions, when you get 10, 12 or more bills in a committee that tend to have difficult policy considerations that tend to need a lot of questions asked and answered and have a lot of public comment, um, invariably you cannot, whether by design, whether by, uh, requirements of the clock or other considerations, you just simply don't have the ability to ask all the questions you need to ask or do the work. Sometimes it needs to be done. We are frequently asked, especially on the education committee to do a lot of that work outside of committee individually, one-on-one with sponsors and with stakeholders, um, to try to minimize the amount of time we're spending on those bills and committee time. And I don't think that's the intention of committee itself, and it certainly doesn't help that that's outside of the public view as well. Um, I I think that as these bill numbers go higher and higher, and some committees get stacked a little deeper, and I understand there's a concern that comes from this committee on how you balance those, maybe this isn't the right name. And that's why I, I tried, uh, tried something that could potentially gather from two or three deeply loaded committees and maybe there has to be some adjustment in what that looks like. Um, but I do think that the trajectory of what we got right now makes it very difficult to adequately vet bills properly in the time constraints we have. Um, that's probably true of all committees, but I think some of these really loaded committees, it's become impossible. And especially as individual legislators have their own load of bills as well, um, you become much more, uh, incapable. The, the committees themselves don't function the way they should. And I know this has been a priority from the legislature, from our leadership, from the governors that we vet our bills properly. Um, and, and, and I don't think necessarily adding, for example, two or three more people to, for example, the education committee would improve that process. We would probably just see more bills come to that committee. Whereas if we had more committees where we could, or even if the decision was from rules to try to in fact break the, uh, the policy of trying to get these bills by focus subject into their directed areas, just from purely a load balancing scenario. I served on Piute it and I know that all the gun bills came there and that was just the best place to put 'em. And we didn't have a ton of workload, but I think that we, that in many times, we'd be happy to also take on some load off of the other committees, especially if it meant that when it came to floor time, we had a better feeling that these bills were properly vetted, that they had enough time to go through the process to have public comment, to ask questions, and to really clear up, clear up their concerns. And they don't have to try to do that outside of committee if they want to get those questions answered. And then we end up with a lot of unknowns. And I, and I, so I, I appreciate the question. I do think that it's part of the problem, and I do think that this might be part of the solution. But again, I'm, I'm, I'm definitely trying to shake things up and I understand why that may be problematic and I'm open to committee's, thoughts, suggestions, or how you wanna move forward.

12. Committee chair37:59

    Awesome. Thank you. Representative Wilcox. Thank you, Mr.

13. Rep. Ryan D. Wilcox38:03

    Chair. Representative. I think I think you're onto, uh, a need a focus area of need, right? Um, I don't know if you've looked at inclusion in any of our existing ones, but as I read through this last night and was thinking about it, I, the only thing that kept coming back to where I could get comfortable was, was actually economic development workforce family is adding that as a focus area to an existing committee. That both of its other subject areas are directly tied. It consistently needs more work, would be easy to focus on. So I don't know if that's, I mean, it doesn't expand the number of committees and we could do that, but it also probably would make it easier in a short term solution to kind of test it out and see what a focus would look like with that one. But meanwhile, I'd love to take a look at the larger issue about whether we should consider additional committees or not through legislative process in the interim. But I haven't really wrapped my mind around what that would do right now, or to get comfortable with that in the, in the Times since I've read your, read your bill. So I Appreciate that, and that's why I brought you know, this here, um, as a rules resolution because you're the right people to say whether or not and how that would look and if it needs to be studied, Right. The, the concern, the focus area of concern is valid and doesn't really have a home and probably would be, we'd benefit from combining that with economic development workforce. But that's what I've got so far. Thanks.

14. Committee chair39:44

    Thank you, Representative Wilcox. Seeing no further clarifying questions from the committee, we'll go to the public. Is there any member of the public that wishes to speak to this bill? Not seeing any in the room, anyone online? No. No one online will go ahead and close public comment and go back to the committee for any committee action or discussion. Representative Peterson,

15. Rep. Peterson40:08

    Uh, I'd like to make a motion to hold HR five.

16. Committee chair40:12

    Okay. That motion is in order. Would you like to speak to it?

17. Rep. Peterson40:15

    Yes. Um, this is a really good conversation and, and you know, you and I had a good conversation about this and it actually got me thinking, I mean, when you were saying maybe we should split in higher ed and I was thinking about what bills were coming through, I thought, you know, we do need to figure out that poor education committee is just drowning. And so, um, I had a conversation with the rules chair and they said, why don't we siphon off higher ed bills to, to economic development workforce, higher ed is workforce. That's what it is. So maybe we need to be doing that. So we've started doing that in practice because of the conversation that you and I had. So I think this is an important conversation, but I also think there are just actually some logistical things mm-hmm. About having more committees. What committees are a committees, which committee are B committees, how many people will need to be where, how do we make sure that the public and stakeholders know which, which agendas they need to be tracking? All of that kind of stuff that I think probably just needs a little more discussion. And I really, I would love for the legislative process committee to discuss this over the interim. Um, but I just feel like maybe we're not quite ready for, for it today. So that's my motion.

18. Committee chair41:14

    Alright. Thank you Representative Peterson. Discussion to the motion to hold scene. Actually, lemme go to the bill sponsor first.

19. Rep. Matt MacPherson41:24

    Uh, yeah, I'm, I, I'm, again, I'm happy to have the conversation. I, I intended to bring these both here to just start trying to shake up the thinking on some of these and have these discussions. And I appreciate the work that you're already doing and if there's a way to, to, uh, move forward or to study this, I'm, I'm more than willing to help along as well.

20. Committee chair41:44

    Thanks. Okay. Further discussion to the motion to hold. Seeing none from the committee. Uh, we'll go back to the bill sponsor for summation.

21. Rep. Matt MacPherson41:54

    Thank you. I'll just waive.

22. Committee chair41:55

    Alright. Summation has been waived to the maker of the motion. Representative Peterson, I'll waive, uh, summation has been waived by Representative Peterson. Okay. I'll go ahead and place the motion of voice vote. All those in favor of the motion to hold HR five, excuse me. Well, I guess we won't substitute it. I, yeah, so the motion is to hold HR five house rules resolution, house standing committees say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say nay. Nay. I'll rule that that passes. That was Representative Lee with nay and I believe that is I know. Thank You. Five, five to one. Thank you so much for your time. Good Job, Matt.