2007 General Assembly priorities tag cloud.

I took all of the bills prefiled so far, loaded them into a database, applied keywords, and pulled out the most frequently-occurring keywords to create this tag cloud. The size of the font reflects the number of bills introduced on a particular topic.

abc abortion adoption alcohol apf assault business children constitution court crime deq dmv doctor domestic violence drugs education election electricity eminent domain employment energy environment finance firearms governor growth housekeeping hunting impact fees judge landlord license license plate littering medicine murder police pollution prison privacy property property tax rape real estate redistricting rent retirement revenue sbe scc school tax telephone transportation vdot voting water

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

13 replies on “2007 General Assembly priorities tag cloud.”

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

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