Comments on: Is this any way to make laws?

By: Glenden Brown

Glenden Brown — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:53:56 +0000

Jeremy – I’ve argued before that I think a year round legislature is worth trying in Utah. The citizen legislator model we use creates so much pressure to pass a particular law in such a short amount of time, there’s so little time to really consider bills, and so many bills get lost in the regular session that more time seems to be worth examining.

There are some things that could be put into place – for instance limiting the times during which new bills could be introduced (maybe only during specific months or during the first week of each month) would allow legislators time to draft bills in a more thoughtful manner, working more effectively with the AG’s office or the governor’s office. A year round legislature would also reduce the inflence of the executive branch which I tend to see as a good thing in general. A year round legislature carries some additional costs, but the payback in terms of a better informed, more thoughtful, quite frankly more leisurely law making process seems worth it.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:03:05 +0000

Glen,

Do you think we’d be better off having these jokers making laws year round instead of just 45 days per year?

I think we’re much better off with the flawed system you’ve talked about in this post than we would be if we were to create a year round sausage factory.

By: Glenden Brown

Glenden Brown — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:18:33 +0000

Richard – You’ve hit the nail on the head. Some legislation requires technical changes but those are really workflow issues for gov’t employees, or changes to the law concerning things like calendaring issues (for instance if something must be available within 24 hours, but the next day is a saturday, then it moves to the next business day which is a monday). Our legislators often operate on the principle that they can write a law in such a way as to create a court challenge that will expand or contract what is constitutional – hence the regular anti-choice laws that are designed to trigger lawsuits. The theory is at some point they’ll find the correct language to outlaw abortion that won’t actually violate constitutional rights to things like privacy.

By: Richard Warnick

Richard Warnick — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:02:13 +0000

All the talk about “technical” stuff is just to confuse people and make them think that legislation is rocket science. If our legislators were smart, they wouldn’t regularly approve unconstitutional bills.

By: caveat

caveat — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:34:26 +0000

But I WANT a caretaker govt that will lie to me while they contrive a way to further consolidate all the money into the hands of a few. It’s the Uh merkin way damnit.

By: glenn

glenn — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:20:43 +0000

Hey, since democracy here is really only a word, and most of those voting don’t even read the bills, let’s just call this the “bums’ rush” version of government. If this is democracy give me a benign king.

Final word…truly, what we want doesn’t matter and hasn’t for a long time.