Updated.
Updated again on 1/8/07.
So, the Vermont Legislature is back in session. They have only been there for two days and there are already 14 bills, (whoops, I meant 24, but now they are already up to 41!) that have been introduced. Look forward to laws about swimming pool fences and having to get a license for mineral prospecting. The legislature doesn’t think we have enough laws to follow yet.
An anonymous commenter has made the case that the mineral prospecting bill was a bad example of a trivial bill. I admit that I threw this post up in a hurry when I wasn’t feeling well, but my point still stands that we need to keep an eye on these guys. Read my comments for more discussion. For the record, the # of bills is up to 54 in just one week!
Is it me or does it seem like these guys have too much time on their hands? I say we cut it back to bi-annual. Last session there were 1,215 bills introduced! In a state of around 500,000 people!
And this year, they are really taking themselves too seriously. Check out this headline: “Legislature convenes with call for Vermont to offer global leadership.“
I decided I should add a category for Vermont politics. I think I’ll keep a closer eye on these guys this year.
Stay tuned!
January 4th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Don’t worry, there will be an exemption for cow flatulance if the milk goes to Cabot Cheese or Ben and Jerry.
January 5th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I don’t get your problem… In scanning through the bills posted thus far, most of them seemed pretty significant… There were a few that were a little over the top, but there was some significant stuff there… Including some that you ought to be all about, like requiring schools to loan textbooks to home schoolers and requiring the state to pay home school parents….
As far as the mineral prospecting bill, if you read it closely, it is actually eliminating state regulations that currently prohibit all prospecting on state lands, replacing them with what seems to be a pretty simple permitting system…
There’s a lot in there that is pretty significant, and would make Vermont a leader in our country, if not the world:
H002 is the kind of comprehensive tort reform that right-wingers have always wanted.
H004 increases juror pay, which might encourage people not to skip out on jury duty, as so many do.
S001 raises the age at which a person may be treated as a youthful offender from 17 to 21, which you may or may not agree with, but at least it’s a stab at the kind of judicial reform that we can all agree is badly needed
H006 proposes a deposit on tires which would make a huge difference here where tires litter our rivers and road banks (you all should clean a section of river each spring and see how many tires get hucked in the rivers each year… I do the section near my house and cleaned it entirely two years ago, this year I hauled a whole truck load of tires off the banks and even then left some because they were filled with gravel and I couldn’t move them)
S005 is another stab at judicial reform
H009 is a full bore school choice plan with a provision to pay the parents of home schooled children
I’m gonna stop because if I keep going this post will be so long that nobody will read it…
Sure there’s some legislation proposed that may seem trivial, but the overwhelming majority of it is either necessary but boring stuff (changing the job description for the commissioner of health) or stuff that identifies and attempts to solve significant problems… Kind of makes me wish our legislature ran year round…
What is it that you are objecting to?
January 5th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I wish I had more time to reply, but I am supposed to be in bed sick. (My husband stayed home today to be with the kids.)
Well, the point of my post was to bring it to people’s attention that the legislature does a lot more than the couple of things the paper prints. It looks like it worked, if you went over and scanned through the bills. I hope more people do the same.
I do think they do too much. I will get into that more later. Actually, I was planning a post today about another waste of time piece of legislation that they passed last year. That was before I woke up so sick. I hope to got to that soon.
As for paying homeschoolers – NO!!! I think the government needs to get out of the homeschool, not give us money, which would only make them feel justified in getting into our private lives!
The long and the short of it is: I think we need less government, not more.
Thanks for your comment, though. It’s good to know somebody’s reading!
January 5th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
A deposit on automobile tires?
Can you say “Hello West Lebanon, New Hampshire”?
January 6th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Well regardless of whether you AGREE with proposed legislation or not, you can’t argue that this is all trivial stuff… You purposfully mention the most trivial bill in the bunch (swimming pool fences) and misinterpret another to imply that what the legislature is doing is just wasting time on nitpicky regulations… And while there will certainly ALWAYS be some nitpicky BS, there’s an awful lot of substance there…
I don’t agree with much of the proposed legislation either, but you can’t argue that they are not adressing some serious problems here… Tort reform, Judicial reform, school choice, energy usage… These are not trivial things…
January 8th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Okay, the prospecting one was a bad example. I threw that post up in haste when I was not feeling well.
The point was about the trivial things, like the pool fences, which is the law in Massachusetts, because I think it is a waste of time. We are a state of 500,000 or so people. We should have enough laws to follow by now. The leg. should have little to do other than funding and maintenance type things.
Often they give us more ridiculous rules to follow and take away from our own ability to make our own decisions and we don’t realize it until the law has gone into effect. I am just trying to get people to pay attention.
I will make a note on the post, anyway.