January 14, 2008
Del. Dance on this year’s General Assembly
In today’s P-I, Del. Dance highlights bills she is patroning/co-patroning. The article concludes with an invitation to the public: “Hearing from you helps us represent you better. Let us assist you in scheduling a tour of the capitol, or maybe a time for you to observe your government at work from the House Chamber Balcony. We will be in Richmond until March 11 and can be reached at (804) 698-1063″ or by email.
I need someone to help me understand the General Assembly. News reports by Del. Dance in the Progress Index state that they had nearly two thousand bills to act on, is that a correct number? Recently she reported that all of the bills had been either passed or voted down. With that many bills to act on, how could adequate time be given to them in order to make well informed and thought out votes? Just look at the PI article on Feb. 10th.(page A5) The expression on the face of Del. Glen Oder, R-Newport News says it all. By the way, that payday lending lobbyist is quite “in your face” with our elected lawmakers. Makes one go “hmmmmnn…..?”
Think of it as an advanced law school reading assignment.
Not only do you have to read and understand the bills, you possibly have to prepare a statement as to why you either support or don’t support it.
Things are bad enough on the state level. Think about the federal level. That’s why there’s a movement (www.readthebill.org) to require that the bills be read out in order to prevent massive omnibus bills with riders and add-ons that fund who knows what.
Akin — the following text comes from this page on RichmondSunlight.com:
Once againg at PPN the saying holds true, “seek and ye shall find”
Thank you for that bit of information on the workings of our elected officials. It kind of helps one to appreciate the magnitude of responsibility attached to holding such office.
More of us should attend those “rooms……. not intimidating for regular folks….”
Car pool anyone? We can go and interact with legislators as they “speak more freely….”
Sounds like a civic lesson. Maybe some of our school teachers could take government students and sit in on, and quite possibly add fresh ideas to the process. Do we have money in the education system for such an activity? Is it already happening?
Ideas are like raindrops, they just keep falling to the ground looking for seeds of action that will help them grow into reality.
Hm, re: # bills, the sunlight site counts 3055 bills b/t both houses for the 2008 session. The 2000 figure was probably accurate at the time of the article, as bills were flying in at an impressive rate there for a while (scroll down to the ‘cumulative bills introduced’ graph).