The Bills That Never Get Filed

In today’s Virginian-Pilot, Joanne Kimberlin has a story that includes some really interesting statistics about legislation. She talked to E.M. Miller Jr., the director of the Division of Legislative Services, which is the group at the legislature that actually writes the bills. (Legislators approach them with ideas—it’s up to Legislative Services to turn those ideas into bills, which the legislators submit.) Kimberlin writes:

Miller has tried to calculate the cost of drafting a piece of legislation but gave up in the face of too many variables. All he knows is that he has a budget of about $6 million a year, and that roughly half of his 57 employees are lawyers, researchers and editors who work full time on bills and resolutions.

What’s introduced isn’t nearly all of the workload. Last year, for example, legislators made 4,363 draft requests. In 547 cases, Miller’s office persuaded the lawmaker to cancel.

“There are times when something’s already been done and they don’t know that,” he said. “We also let them know when the last guy who tried it got a lot of bad publicity.”

Of the 3,816 pieces of legislation prepared in 2010, patrons pulled the plug on 852 before they could be introduced.

Of the 2,964 they did submit, 1,541 passed—less than half of what came out of Miller’s office, and about the same percentage that can be expected to survive this year.