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.

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.

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.

On the Republican side, the Republican Party of Virginia maintains a blog, a Twitter feed, and a YouTube channel. And the House Republican Caucus maintains a blog (which they label “un-official”) and a related Twitter feed.

And on the Democratic side, the Democratic Party of Virginia maintains a YouTube channel, while the House Democratic Caucus has a pair of blogs, one the voice of the caucus and one intermingling video and press releases.

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.