Comments on: House facing 15 bill/delegate limitation.

By: Genevieve

Genevieve — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:21:13 +0000

Score one for Kris!

What would be awesome is if the legislators were allowed to set up a market in bills. So if Delegate 1 was feeling uninspired one session and only came up with, say, 13 proposals, Bob Marshall could purchase his other two bill credits. A cash market would work, but I’m thinking that you all could come up with far more interesting trades. You could offer Bob your leftover bill credits if he agrees to, I dunno, wash your car, or fetch coffee for a week or something.

By: Kris Amundson

Kris Amundson — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:42:12 +0000

Actually, what we call “the single-object rule” is in the Virginia Constitution so it would be pretty hard to overturn. Here is what Article IV, § 12 says: “No law shall embrace more than one object, which shall be expressed in its title. Nor shall any law be revived or amended with reference to its title, but the act revived or the section amended shall be reenacted and published at length.”

By: Will

Will — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:10:08 +0000

This will be interesting. I hope you’ll post updates here alerting folks to check out what you’ve learned at Richmond Sunlight.

Thanks.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:37:29 +0000

I’m being facetious, but bear in mind that since the rules are writen by legislators….

By: Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:26:42 +0000

@Sam: I thought there was a rule preventing state legislators from glomming bills together. Isn’t each bill restricted to a single topic?

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:49:37 +0000

I don’t know, Stephen, I suspect there would be a few proper bills that had some commendations rolled into them somewhere. You’d see a House Bill to provide funding for a study of bridges in Hampton Roads; and to recognize the importance of the Washington and Lee Golf Team’s winning season.

Or there would be one commendation bill every year, and it would turn into a Christmas Tree for everyone else’s commendations. The same bill mourning the passing of a beloved public school teacher in Fairfax would also celebrate the 25 year anniversary of the establishment of a recreational bowling league’s charity bowl-a-thon in Bedford. It would be the Omnibus Commendation Bill of 2009, and the one and only stipulation would be that for every commendation you hang on the tree, you have to buy a drink for the legislator who sacrificed one of his 15 bills towards setting it up.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:12:06 +0000

I don’t think commendations count towards their bill count. If they did, then that would probably end the practice altogether.

By: Lloyd Snook

Lloyd Snook — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:11:01 +0000

Hopefully they’ll abandon the practice of having 8 different legislators introduce the same bill, with different numbers. Only one comes out of committee, but the job of tracking the legislation gets a lot tougher.