Keeping track of bills that matter to you

December 31, 2008

The Virginia General Assembly will convene in Richmond Jan. 14. This year’s legislature will meet in a short session, lasting until late February.

With the state’s budget shortfall, expect finances and money issues to dominate, as they have for the past several years.
But if experience holds, there will be thousands of bills proposed and considered by the House of Delegates and the Senate.

Just what will that mean to you and your business?

If you want to follow legislation, the Assembly has conveniently put together an excellent Web site that allows you to track any piece of legislation, from filing to disposition.

The home page for the Assembly’s Legislative Information System (http://leg1 .state.va.us/) provides a straightforward way to access all the data. That page provides:

• A link to a list of all bills that have filed.

• A link to a complete directory of delegates and senators, including contact information, both in Richmond and the legislator’s home district.

• A searchable database if you want to pinpoint a topic

A quick example

If you take a quick look at the list of bills, you’ll see many measures from the 2008 session that were “carried over.” In other words, the legislators, for whatever reason, didn’t deal with it last January. Perhaps the measure was controversial or just didn’t have the support. Or considering that senators and delegates must deal with thousands of bills, they simply may not have had time. If a measure is carried over, that means it wasn’t killed outright.

A number of bills have been filed already, or “prefiled.” While the Virginia General Assembly only meets for a couple of months in the winter, legislators and their staffs may be preparing new legislation as the year goes on.

Here’s an example: Last month, Del Algie T. Howell Jr., D-Norfolk, filed House Bill 1615. This bill, at its core, would prohibit texting while driving.

Take a look at HB 1615’s page: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504 .exe?091+sum+HB1615

There is a summary of the bill. There is a link to the sponsor, in this case, Del. Howell. There is a link to any other delegates who may sign on as sponsors (none so far).

There is a timeline for the bill. HB 1615 was prefiled on Nov. 19, and will be offered on Jan. 14, once the Assembly is in session.

You’ll find a link to the full text of the bill as offered. HB 1615 would make it illegal to operate a motor vehicle on the highways of the commonwealth while using any electronic device designed for the transmission of text messages.

The bill likewise would apply to texting while riding a bicycle or a moped. The prohibition would not apply to the entry of a name or phone number for making a call on a cell phone. The proposed penalties for texting while driving: A fine of 20 bucks for the first offense, 50 bucks for the second and any subsequent offenses.

If you’re interested in following this bill, after the session convenes, you can go back to this page and follow its progress. Its committee assignment is pending.

If HB 1615 proceeds to committee and if there are any amendments, those will be duly reported on the page with the history of the bill, including text of the amendments or any substitutions.

This method of tracking a bill sure beats the way that we had to cover the Assembly about 15 years ago – Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the BLB’s sister paper for the legal community, paid a fairly substantial fee for the privilege of receiving reams of paper, copies of all the bills as filed. When there were amendments and newer versions of bills, the printers would use different colors of paper representing different versions. Our reporters probably looked like refugees from a confetti factory when walking back to the office with an armload of those late in a session.

By the way, if you are worried that your BlackBerry habit will be affected by Del. Howell’s texting-while-driving measure, you may take a little comfort in history. The Legislative Information Services main page includes info from past Assembly sessions, back to 1994.

A quick search of the 2008 material discloses that there also was a texting-while-driving bill before the Assembly last year, introduced by Del. James M. Scott, D-Merrifield. The measure died in the Transportation committee.

Written by Paul Fletcher  |  Filed Under Technology 

Comments

Got something to say?