Cool! But I don’t like seeing energy so small. And crime??? Must be an election year. Oh, brother!

Posted by eileen on 5 January 2007 @ 7am

Do you have a link to the list of prefiled bills you can share? Thanks!

Posted by J.C. Wilmore on 5 January 2007 @ 8am

Cool.

Posted by David Mastio on 5 January 2007 @ 8am

Yeah, energy, environment, littering, pollution, and water all come up small. But I’m glad to see they’re addressing the drug and crime wave that has swept across Virginia and threatens to turn it into a post-apocalyptic hell.

Posted by Miles on 5 January 2007 @ 9am

Do you have a link to the list of prefiled bills you can share?

Sure thing.

There are some real doozies.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 5 January 2007 @ 10am

I should mention that those words that don’t appear at all simply didn’t have enough bills (or any bills) to make the cut.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 5 January 2007 @ 10am

What, you can’t click on the tags to see a list of bills containing the term?

Geez, you must be slacking off.

Posted by Steve on 5 January 2007 @ 11am

In just a few days, Steve. :)

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 5 January 2007 @ 11am

Anyone notice on this list of tags that while the largest individual word here is TRANSPORTATION, four very closely related terms–dmv,vdot,license/plate, and pollution–are tiny. And several you would expect to see–development, rail, mass transit, bus, car, infrastructure, and traffic–didn’t even make the list.

So … just what do all those transportation bills actually deal with?

Posted by TLPatten on 5 January 2007 @ 11am

I’m sorry, I just now noticed that I stupidly used link tags that, of course, link to nothing, surely leading many people to click on them and get 404s. I’ve stripped out those link tags now.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 5 January 2007 @ 11am

Anyone notice on this list of tags that while the largest individual word here is TRANSPORTATION, four very closely related terms–dmv,vdot,license/plate, and pollution–are tiny. And several you would expect to see–development, rail, mass transit, bus, car, infrastructure, and traffic–didn’t even make the list.

Multiple tags are often assigned to a single bill. Any bill that has anything to do with the highway system or automobiles, for instance, is tagged “transportation.” Imagine that there are three bills: one encouraging the state to participate in a new interstate, one providing funding to build a single road in Northern Virginia, and one regulating school buses. All three would be tagged with “transportation,” but the first two might also be tagged with “constructions” and the third “education.”

So transportation would be large because it encompasses many smaller tags that appear smaller, or that may not appear at all.

Posted by Waldo Jaquith on 5 January 2007 @ 11am

Thanks for ’splainin’ dat. :)

Posted by TLPatten on 5 January 2007 @ 12pm

Waldo,

I would suggest that another reason for the emphasis on transportation is the recent nod by Governor Kaine to support using the 550 million dollar surplus for transportation issues. This paves the way and we can expect a disproportionate, albeit long overdue, funding bills for road, public transport and rail. The latter particularly pleases me.

Posted by Duane Gran on 5 January 2007 @ 2pm