The General Assembly adjourned for the year yesterday, on time and without need to adjourn for a special session later in the year. The technical term for this is adjourning “sine die,” a term that legislative insiders use to mean “we can finally go home.” The phrase is Latin, generally pronounced “SEE-nei DEE-ei,” meaning “without day,” as in to adjourn indefinitely. Of course, they will be convening again—in January 2010, for an eight-week budget year session. Between now and then, though, every member of the House of Delegates is up for reelection. Republicans are defending their majority, while Democrats are looking to win the half-dozen seats necessary to control the legislature for redistricting, in 2011.
In the weeks and months ahead, we at Richmond Sunlight will be crunching some numbers on legislation, the video of the session, and adding some new features for folks looking to keep study what happened during this and past sessions.
Today was Crossover, the day the falls midway through each session when all bills in the House have to make it to the Senate to survive, and vice versa. Those bills that didn’t make the cut are now marked as “Failed” throughout the site, and there’s a whole mess of ‘em.
There’s a little link that you might see in the sidebar of some bills: “Fiscal Impact Statement.” It sounds boring, but it’s actually pretty interesting, and well worth looking at. Just about any bill that the legislature’s staff figures is going to cost money or save money gets submitted to a nonpartisan review process to estimate how much money we’re looking at.
To look at one bill that’s popular on Richmond Sunlight, consider Del. David Englin’s Indoor Clean Air Act, which proposes to ban smoking in restaurants. The Department of Planning and Budget issued a fiscal impact statement for that bill. They figure the bill will affect the Virginia Department of Health, the Department of Medical Assistance Services, and all localities in the state. They don’t see that it’ll cost the health department any more, so it shouldn’t cost anything. And anybody caught smoking in a restaurant will have to pay a $25 fine, so that’s money coming in…but they’re not guessing how many people will end up having to pay up. So there’s no net dollar value in this impact statement, which is too bad—it’s great to be able to put a dollar value on a bill.
Another bill getting a lot of attention is Del. Bob Marshall’s opposition to the REAL ID Act, which proposes that the state refuse to participate in the federal government’s efforts to establish a national standard for identification cards. DPB’s impact statement is a bit more specific on this one. The state is set to spend $5.2M annually to comply with REAL ID, so that would be some immediate savings. But Virginia would also lose out on a lot of money: “The revenue impact of this bill likely would be much higher than its impact on expenditures, but it is impossible to quantify the revenue impact precisely.” If state agencies can’t comply with federal standards, DPB figures they’re likely to lose federal contracts, probably worth a lot more than $5.2M. Also, it would result in about 200,000 commercial drivers losing their Virginia licenses, since they wouldn’t meet federal standards, which DPB describes dryly as having a “negative impact on commercial activity in the Commonwealth.”
There’s some really good stuff buried in fiscal impact statements. If you want to know whether a bill is a good idea, check for that “Fiscal Impact Statement” link in the sidebar and give it a read. Many of them conclude that it’s impossible to determine the impact, but many contain some real gems.
There’s a great new Richmond Sunlight feature that we’ve been testing out for this first half of the 2009 session: Richmond Sunlight for the iPhone. It’s a stripped-down version of the site, optimized to run on your iPhone or iPod Touch, that lists legislators and bills. It’s just past the proof-of-concept of stage, and probably not useful to the great majority of people. But if you’re the kind person who must know the latest status of a bill, or whether a particular senator’s district includes a particular city, this is for you. It’s also a great companion when you’re sitting in the gallery of the House or the Senate, watching the proceedings, and wanting more details than what’s at hand. Remember the URL—m.richmondsunlight.com—or bookmark it on your iPhone.
Democrat Charniele Herring was elected to represent Alexandria in the House of Delegates in a special election two weeks ago, but was prevented from taking her seat until yesterday. The Republican majority in the House contended that the margin in the election was too close to seat her without a recount, though the State Board of Elections had certified her as the winner. Every day, Democrats attempted to get her seated, and every day the vote would fail on a party line vote. When the recount was completed, it was determined that Herring had won the race, and she was sworn in accordingly.
Richmond Sunlight has a pair of benefactors who warrant thanks for their help.
The first is Hyphenated People, the website development shop who created our new look. They conceived of it, designed it, and coded it, and the result is a very sharp-looking, significantly more usable website than the beastly look that we’d hacked together in December of 2006.
The second is Blue Ridge InternetWorks, who provides the infrastructure that powers our website. We never could have forecast the popularity of Richmond Sunlight—600,000 page views in the past year, 150,000 visits—and our old $50/month web host couldn’t possibly keep up. Blue Ridge InternetWorks has given us a dedicated server and an absurdly fast internet connection for the low, low cost of free.
These sponsors helped because they’re committed to open government in Virginia. Each of them approached Richmond Sunlight and volunteered their services, and we’re enormously grateful to them.
Though they’re not sponsors in the financial sense, this is a good opportunity to thank the General Assembly’s IT staff and the clerks and their staffs of the respective chambers. The legislative data on Richmond Sunlight comes straight from the legislature’s database. Without these folks and their hard work, Richmond Sunlight would be impossible. We’re enormously grateful to them for their essential contributions to open government in Virginia.
If you’re a dedicated researcher of legislation on Richmond Sunlight, consider paying a visit to the Recommended Bills section. This is an experimental feature on Richmond Sunlight that recommends bills that you might be interested in, given the bills that you’ve been reading. Try it out and let us know what you think!
Every year there are more ways to follow the General Assembly online, and the Republican Party and Democratic Party are helping people to do that. Each party is embracing the internet to help people understand what’s going on during the session.
If you’re interested in getting some help in sorting through what’s important during the session, consider using the information provided by Democrats or Republicans (or both!) to find the message in all of the noise.
