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ACOUT THE SCORECARDS:
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This year, we are presenting the scorecard with the same three components as last year:
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·        Voting Record
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·        Committee Efficiency
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·        Individual Initiative
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We have done this to provide objective information on the behaviors that we believe constituents are interested in: how their representatives vote, what their committees get done and how active they are in sponsoring and leading the passage of legislation in accordance with our values.
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Voting Record -
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As we did last year, this year only floor votes were scored. We captured the information about votes for bills that failed in committee but have not presented it here.
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Committee Efficiency -
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The productivity index rewards both the efficiency of a committee as well as the individual initiative of representatives. Committees were scored in terms of their rate of passage of bills, using our 216 priority bills, and each legislator was given the grade corresponding to the committee they were on. Some committees only passed 56% of the bills that they saw out of committee, while others passed 100%. It is our hope that this will shine a light on the need for committees to function efficiently and effectively, particularly given the compressed schedule of the Maryland legislature
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Individual Initiative -
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The individual initiative score rates bills sponsored, as a subset of our 216 priority bills, by each legislator. Here we are attempting to draw attention to the individual leadership of legislators, beyond the work of the committee they were assigned to.
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Together we hope that the 3 scores – the voting record, the individual initiative and the efficiency of the committee of each representative, provides constituents with an objective and balanced view of the performance of each legislator.
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TABS IN THE WORKBOOK:
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Legislator Scores and Grades - this tab contains the summary of all the voting scores and the grades, as well as committee efficiency rankings and rankings of individual initiative
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Committee Summary - this tab shows how the committee efficiency scores were derived
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House Bills Original Score - this tab shows all the bills that were scored and the votes of each House member
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Senate Bills Original Score - this tab showes all the bills that were scored and the votes of each Senator
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House Bills Converted - this tab takes the Yes and No votes from the House Bills Original Score tab and converts them to numerics using the methodology stated below. It then takes those numeric scores and calculates grades
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Senate Bills Converted - this tab takes the Yes and No votes from the Senate Bills Original Score tab and converts them to numerics using the methodology stated below. It then takes those numeric scores and calculates grades.
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METHODOLOGY:
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Almost 200 bills were scored. These are the bills that the Coalition supported this session. Separate versions of the same bill from the House and Senate were scored separately.
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There are three statuses that are interesting - Returns Passed means it came back from the other chamber with no amendments; Passed Enrolled means that there were amendments made in the other chamber that had to be accepted for it to pass;
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and Passed Crossover means it passed one House but never got a vote in the other House.
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Each bill for the House and Senate that got a floor vote were scored. The scores are taken from the data on the Maryland General Assembly Legislative site. Scores are Y (favorable), N (unfavorable), E (excused), A (absent), and NV (present for the vote but not voting)
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You can see the votes on the tabs called House Bills Original Score and Senate Bills Original Score.
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Once each bill was scored, the scores were then converted to numbers. Y = 1; N = -1; E = blank; A = blank; NV = -1. An NV designation is considered the same as a N, since the legislator is present at the time of the vote and decides not to vote.
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The numeric conversions can be found on the House Bills Converted and Senate Bills Converted tabs.
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The numeric conversions are then turned into scores. The numbers relating to each vote are added up and divided by the total number of bills that the legislator voted on. So, if they saw 4 bills in a particular category, and they voted "Y" for 3 and "N" for 1,
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the resulting score would be 50% ((1+1+1-1)/4))
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You can see the scores on the House Bills Converted and Senate Bills Converted tabs, and also on the Legislator Scores and Grades tab.
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Scores were converted to Grades by using the following formula - Less than a 60% = F, 60% - 70% = D, 70% - 80% = C, 80% - 90% = B and Greater than 90% = A. Grades can be seen on the Legislator Scores and Grades tab.
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This year, based on our Coalition's priorities, we have adjusted some of the scores from the original recorded votes. They are highlighted on the House Bills Original Scores and Senate Bills Original Scores
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tabs. For several priority bills that did not get votes in committee, we added a negative vote for the Chair of the committee for not bringing the bill to a vote. Three bills were adjusted - one environmental bill and
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and two social justice (Immigration) bills. Additionally, we recorded a negative vote for the Senate President and the House Speaker for weakening the Climate Solutions Now Act.
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Finally, there were three House bills where we recorded the second-to-the-last vote because most of the members of one Committee were not present for the final vote and were in conference.
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Committees were also scored. Their scores were derived by taking the total number of bills that each committee saw out of the almost 216 bills, and calculating how many passed and failed. The Productivity Score for each committee is as follows:
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Total number of bills passed / total number of bills received. This data can be seen on the Committee Summary tab as well as on the Legislator Scores and Grades tab.
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Finally, the number of bills out of the 216 bills that each legislator sponsored is recorded as an Individual Initiative score. This data can be seen on the Legislator Scores and Grades tab.
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