VA BILL WATCH

Watching the progress of bills that your elected officials are bringing forth can be about as exciting as watching a ’slug race’ or ‘paint dry’.

The Richmond Sunlight has made this a far less painful process than it could be. At the header on this page are a series of links, one of which is titled “Bills“. Dragging the cursor across it will provide you with a dropdown list of several ways the bills (active and historical) in the Virginia Legislature can be viewed:

  1. By Topic
  2. Newest
  3. House
  4. Senate
  5. Past Years (2006 through 2009)

I personally use option number 1 “By Topic” much of the time because I can monitor the progress of bills that are of particular interest to me, such as FOIA.

If you click on “By Topic” you will be taken to a web page that has a lot of words and phrases on the left hand side. These are the different topics to which bills relate.  This list may look a bit confusing because the words are in a lot of different sizes (font sizes). The size of the print relates to the number of bills that are associated with the topic. IT DOES NOT INDICATE THE IMPORT OR IMPLICATIONS OF THE BILL. A topic with only one bill could reference a bill have far greater consequences for citizens than a topic having hundreds of bills related to it.

So from the topics page, pick a topic that is of interest to you. Since I live in Christiansburg, I will select the topic ‘christiansburg‘ from the list and click on it. This brings me to a page entitled “2010 Bills Tagged with “Christiansburg”. Just below that it is noted that 3 bills are found. Below that are two tabs, 1) for House (Bills) and 2) for Senate (Bills).

The tab areas are each set up in 3 columns

  • #
  • Title
  • Status

The Number of the Bill (i.e., HB994) will provide you with general information as to which legislator sponsored the bill (patron), the date it was submitted, and the bills status, i.e.,

HB994 —– Charter; Town of Christiansburg. —— in subcommittee

By clicking on the active link HB994, you will be taken to a page where a “Description” of the bill is provided. At the end of the description, there is a link (View Full Text) that will take you to a full copy of the proposed bill.

Right of the “Description” section, there is a check list showing you the “Progress” of the bill.

Below “Description”, you will find another section “Status” which shows you where the bill is at in the process. It includes links to any Committee that might be reviewing the document and that link takes you to a page listing all of the Committee members on the Committee. Each of those individual links take you to a page about that Legislator including biographical information, sources of contribution, blogs, and media links.

The final section on the left side is a place for you to post any comments you may have on this bill.

An additional important feature can be found on the right side of the page. Here is a place where you can place a vote on whether or not you believe the bill should be passed.

All in all, this is about the most painless method I have found of tracking bills that may be of importance to you. My gratitude to the Richmond Sunlight for making this accessible and easy to use.

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