This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 16th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

As state legislatures start meeting in this new year, just how do they obfuscate, hide, and keep the public in the dark?

Jack McHugh is a senior legislative analyst at the Mackinaw Center in Michigan.

We spoke about state legislatures

subterfuge last week in Austin, Texas.

You know a lot about how state legislatures do what they do. Are there any general principles that a attentive layman could

discern from legislators trying to either hide what they're doing or present an incorrect interpretation of what they're doing and get away with it, essentially.

I would say that a good place to start is to never presume that what they say a bill does or is

about is what a bill does or is about and that applies to bills that are voted on and bills that are introduced

and never go anywhere.

Okay. I remember years ago in Kentucky lawmakers would put in a bald-faced manner because they're the people

who are actually making law and they feel I think empowered to temporarily suspend laws for the purposes of

passing individual pieces of legislation. They'll say notwithstanding the terms of this statute, we're going to do this thing, even though

the statute would make it illegal.

They certainly do that with their own rules a lot and sometimes not just their own rules.

So I'll give an example in the Michigan legislature.

There's a requirement that for a bill to get immediate effect and I believe this is in the Constitution it requires a

two-thirds vote for it to go into effect right away. So but it doesn't say whether

that needs to be a record roll call vote.

So in the Senate, which is more collegial,

they generally do a record roll call vote in the House. It's a quick voice vote. All those in favor of a

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