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Speaker
O'Brien's Commission on
Legislative Reform
Recommendations -
Click here
Senate
Reforms Sponsored by Senator
Stack during the 2005-06
Session
Senate Bill 102,
would mandate that each vote
taken in the House or Senate
be posted on the Internet
site of that particular
chamber within 24 hours of
the vote. Committee votes
would have to be posted
within 48 hours. The bill
would also require the
complete journal of each
legislative session day to
be posted on the Internet
within 30 calendar days. It
would further mandate that a
Legislative Data Processing
Committee maintain a
publicly accessible database
of the official version of
all statutory laws of the
Commonwealth. Currently,
only private companies have
maintained such databases.
Senate Bill 103,
would require that no bill
be passed until it has been
in its final form, as
amended, for at least 72
hours. This is intended to
prevent the gut-and-amend
process by which a piece of
legislation appears on the
legislative calendar for
three days as required by
the state Constitution, then
is amended at the 11th
hour, often with
dramatically different
provisions than those
contained in the original
bill.
Similarly, no bill could be
approved by a committee unless
it has been in the considered
form for at least 48 hours, and
no amendment could be added to a
bill in committee unless it has
been publicly available for at
least 24 hours.
The final version of any bill
that would require the
expenditure of state funds would
have to be referred to the
Appropriations Committee of
either chamber and receive a
fiscal note prior to passage.
The bill would also allow 10
percent of the elected members
of either the House or Senate to
sign a petition requiring a
public hearing on the final
version of any bill prior to
passage.
Senate Bill 104, would
grant legal standing to every
adult resident of the
Commonwealth to challenge in
court, within one year of
enactment of a bill, the
legislature’s compliance with
those legal requirements.
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