This year a whopping 2,338 bills were introduced in the General Assembly of those 848 passed. (Do we really need 848 new laws?) VPAP has designed a handy chart that shows the course of these bills through the General Assembly. [read_more]
The Fate of General Assembly Bills for the 2015 Session
written by Jeanine Martin
April 13, 2015
6 comments
Jeanine Martin
Also known as Lovettsville Lady, I am a Republican activist in the wilds of western Loudoun County.
6 comments
It means government is far to big.
Eliminate the odd year session and do not add days to the time of the even year session.
They are passing hundreds of bills every year, and they have absolutely no way to enforce them. More money for law-enforcement anyone? More money for lawyers anyone?
They are totally out of control. Up to you nothing but no good, every year,for months. It is beyond stupid. It is beyond belief.
Will someone please explain to me the purpose of ‘no recorded’ votes?
Other than of course the obvious — politicians DON’T want to be held accountable for the their votes & actions to their constituents.
Anybody??..
Hard to understand from just the graphs but my guess would be they are referring to the initial committee/sub-committee bill review. In Virginia, little is available to determine legislative intent compared to other states and there are no official transcripts of the House and Senate debates or the proceedings of the standing committees and subcommittes. All individual bills are initially referred to an “appropriate” standing committee, there are 14 House committees, and 12 in the Senate. Almost always in the House of Delegates and sometimes in the Senate, the bill is then
assigned to a subcommittee made up of 6-8 members of the full committee. They hear the bill first and make a “recommendation” to the full committee if the bill will move forward. It is my understanding that these votes are “not recorded” its a simple majority up or down. If the full committee acts favorably on the bill (reports the bill by a majority vote in favor), the bill then moves forward to it’s first reading before the full House, if defeated by the committee (passed-by-indefinitely), the bill is then dead for the session, unless a member who voted to kill it moves that the vote be reconsidered. Not the most “open” process in my opinion and at the committee/subcommittee level NO individual legislator vote audit trail for review in the district by concerned citizens will exist. I believe I have my facts correct here but please feel free to correct me if I misstated something.
It could be simply that no vote was taken on them. If every bill was required to be voted on, it is my hypothesis that committees and sub-committees would be jammed with politically charged bills that are designed to force vulnerable members into hard votes. These votes would then be used by their opponents as “gotcha” hit pieces on the campaign trail.
Would you want the General Assembly to handle more than 2338 bills in less than a two month span? I certainly wouldn’t. I want my legislators to fully read and understand the ramifications of what they are voting on. The General Assembly held recorded votes on 70% of bills introduced. That seems like a decent number of recorded votes. Are there any bills that did not get a recorded vote that you wish did? If so, do some research and talk to you legislators about it. I’m sure that they would be happy to chat with you about it.
I believe the real issue here is the 2,338 bills before the GA in the first place. The state’s legislative workflow process and prioritization is simply abysmal and has been for years under both Republicans and Democrats. The legislative pipeline needs to undergo a serious scrubbing and reduction to map available time and resources to existing issues and problems and the Roman Emperor’s thumbs up or down behind closed doors at the committee or subcommittee level, with no visibility to the constituents, is a poor way to achieve that end. This is a leadership failure and too often results in delegates voting on bills they don’t fully comprehend or worse simply misunderstand, I leave it to the individual to question whose best interest this manufacturing assembly line (minus the QA) approach to legislation might most benefit.
Do away will the odd year session for starters.