THE OFFICE OF THE CLERK From the first Congress, the House of Representatives attached particular significance to the Office of the Clerk. Indeed, the framers of the Constitution intended and provided for the House to have officers, pursuant to the authority of Article 1, Section 2 (5) of the U.S. Constitution. The first House of Representatives, which convened in 1789, proceeded to the appointment of the first Clerk, John Beckley of Virginia, following the election of the Speaker. Over two hundred years later, with the election by the 104th Congress of Robin H. Carle as Clerk, the House received its first woman officer. The Precedents cite instances in which the House delayed proceedings on other business, except the adoption of Rules, until a Clerk had been chosen. In another instance, the Clerk having died, the House at once elected a successor, declining to have the chief clerk fill the vacancy temporarily. The position of Clerk can be traced to English parliamentary practice. With regard to the contemporary Department of the Clerk of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Erskine May describes "(its) essential function ... to provide the procedural assistance necessary for the orderly conduct of the work of the House, and its Committees..." In its evolution from English parliamentary practice, through the position of Secretary of the Continental Congress, the duties of the Clerk established on the first day of the First Congress in 1789 went beyond ceremony to the basic exercise of substantive authority. The authority to constitute and organize the House of Representatives, as manifested in the reception of the credentials of the Members-elect and the compilation of the role of members, is evidence of the special relationship of this legislative officer to the House. Regardless of whether the title of the position should be borrowed from English tradition or called by any other name, the House required a Clerk. It was only natural then that as the early Congresses developed, the House should delegate to the Clerk responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the body, including powers of disbursement and maintenance of accounts. These so-called "house-keeping" functions expanded considerably during the first half of the twentieth century with the introduction of new technologies and the growth of congressional staff. But it is important to note that these other duties accreted to the Clerk by virtue of his original authority and purpose to administer to the legislative duties of the House. The original and traditional duties of the Clerk stemmed from the authority of the Office to conduct the procedural business of the House, and included: accepting the credentials of the Members-elect; making of entries and journals of the proceedings of the House; the endorsement of bills passed by the body; reading of required papers in the House; authority to receive messages from the President and from the Senate on behalf of the House; and the custody of all House records and documents. In the modern Congress, the traditional legislative functions of the Clerk have acquired a degree of institutional specialization and sophistication perhaps not imagined in 1789. The administration of legislative services has evolved into a particular craft unique to the legislative process and its institutions. Those services have matured from the traditional ministerial duties entrusted to the early Clerks of the House, in part in response to the needs of the institution, but also as an accommodation to the technology of the day. Accordingly, the proper and competent administration of legislative services requires knowledge of and compatibility with specific institutional norms, customs, and folkways, all of which are not entirely consistent with other vocations or professions. The legislative process as employed in the House of Representatives, regardless of generation, has its own constancy of language, time, and process. Rules and Members may change but the essential elements of creating legislation remain. The skills required to work within such a system and administer the process with competence are unique to the profession. Each of the current departments of the Office of the Clerk should properly be considered as part of the framework of legislative services. These services are interdependent, are an essential, mandated component of the legislative process, and are more closely aligned with the culture of the legislative process than other administrative or support functions of the House. The controlling criteria is their common relationship to the management of legislative information. Any financial or technical function is secondary to the pure legislative mission of the department or is an unavoidable byproduct of its services. This integration of services did not occur by chance. The reorganization of legislative services, particularly over the past twenty years was purposeful and in part in response to the advantages offered by emerging technologies. The department of Legislative Operations emerged as a consolidation of the most ancient and basic functions delegated to the Clerk. The Official Reporters, both for Committees and Debates, became a logical addition to the administrative framework of ministerial legislative services managed under the Clerk's umbrella. House procedures and advances in data technology justified the transfer of the Official Reporter function to the Clerk's jurisdiction. The House Library, Records and Registration, and LEGIS are more commonly regarded as administrators of the "end-product of legislative activity", although LEGIS and Records and Registration are involved in more contemporaneous information services. Their duties emanate from the Clerk's traditional duty of maintaining the Journal of the House and other official papers of the body. Today, they are primarily the Clerk's delegated custodians of information. Legislative Computer Systems is a striking example of the ease with which a legislative services culture can embrace and control technology. LCS is now a thoroughly unique creature of the House. Its systems designs are unique to the body and conform entirely to the dictates of the process. Its personnel are as steeped in and as proficient in the intricacies of the legislative process as any legislative clerk. It manages the electronic flow of Clerk's legislative information and is the Clerk's link to H.I.S. House Resolution 423 (102nd Congress) dramatically affected the organization of the Office of the Clerk. It resulted in the transfer of five departments and over 300 employees to the newly-created Director of Non-legislative and Financial Services. The resolution also struck at the procurement and disbursement authority of the Clerk as provided pursuant to Clause 3 of Rule III of the Rules of the House, although such authority can only be amended by statute. In practice, however, reasonable justification exists to provide the Clerk certain limited authority to procure and disburse consistent with the operations of departments under the Clerk's jurisdiction. A further realignment of authority and responsibility has occurred with the transition associated with the 104th Congress. The Office of the Clerk is an example of a successful living tradition. It has evolved from the age of the quill pen to the frontier of the microchip. It will continue to evolve and fully develop those functions central to its mission. LEGISLATIVE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT/ THE OFFICE OF THE CLERK AND THE INFORMATION With the advent of the Age of Information and the public demand for immediate access to wide variety of public information, the Office of the Clerk finds itself uniquely positioned to participate as a first source provider of information. For whatever technology may be developed to improve electronic data access to House information, it is the information gathered and processed by the Clerk that will be the primary commodity of these information services. For many years preceding the creation of the Internet, the Office of the Clerk was already at work establishing databases and processing systems. Through its proprietary Electronic Voting System database ( office of Legislative Computer Systems) and the data gathering capability of LEGIS, the Clerk is an integral interconnect and information provider to H.I.S. and the Government Printing Office. In fact, the H.I.S. Legislative Information Management System (LIMS) could not exist but for the front-end raw data collection and data entry by a handful of legislative clerks under the direction of the Clerk. Today, much of the legislative information received by legislative clerks is transmitted electronically for public consumption or for official printing. As the technology develops and expands, the Office of the Clerk can be relied upon to be a vital and essential component of an on-line House of Representatives. MAIN OFFICE, GENERAL & INFORMATION IMMEDIATE OFFICE Linda Nave, Deputy Clerk H-154 The Capitol 5-7000 The services of the Office of the Clerk, including the overall management of its various departments, are coordinated through the Immediate Office. This Office also directly administers other services of interest to congressional and committee offices, a partial list, of which, includes the following: Certificates of Election Former Member ID Cards Publications, including Reports Required to be Made to Congress, Capitol Directory, Supervision of vacant congressional offices Procurement of U.S. Code, U.S.C.A., or F.C.A sets for Member offices Custodian of and access to non-current records of the House and its committees Accepts orders from Members and Committees for reproduction of public and private Distribution of Summary of Legislative Activity and Voting Percentages for individual Initiation and Keeper of Discharge Petition Members and staff are invited and encouraged to contact the Immediate Office for assistance in obtaining or learning more about the various services offered. FLOOR AND REPORTING SERVICES BILL CLERK 5-7598 A unit of the Office of Legislative Operations, the Bill Clerk receives and processes introduced bills and resolutions, amendments, additional cosponsors, and executive communications. These papers can only be received by the Bill Clerk while the House is actually in session, and are customarily deposited in the hopper, a wooden box suspended from the end of the lower level of the House floor rostrum on the Speaker's right. The Bill Clerk assigns numbers to introduced bills and resolutions after the Parliamentarian, on behalf of the Speaker, has designated the appropriate committee referrals. Numbers are also assigned to amendments submitted for printing in the Congressional Record. Briefs pertaining to daily executive communications and introduced bills and resolutions are prepared by the Bill Clerk and published in the next day's Congressional Record, as are listings of additional cosponsors. This data is also provided directly to the Legislative Information Management System for distribution by H.I.S. CLOAKROOMS Republican H223 The Capitol Democratic H222 The Capitol Floor Info: 5-7400 Legis. Program: 5-1600 Messages Only: 5-0466 The Cloakrooms operate under the supervision of the Clerk, and in close coordination with the Republican and Democratic Leadership, as a center for House Floor services, information, and communications. Services common to both cloakrooms include: |