Many years ago I worked as a telephone man in the NY State Legislature, and it was even worse there. If you were a citizen and wanted to submit a bill, you wrote it up, following a format that was supplied, and then shopped it to legislators to find someone who would carry it, which, if you were at all savvy, you would know which ones to give it to. Legislative insiders, political hacks, lobbyists, and so on, could "fast track" bills through specific legislators. Legislators wanting to submit a bill would either have an intern draft it, or they would "blue line" it ( just write down what they wanted to accomplish) and submit it to the "Bill Drafting Committee" which would draft the bill and return it for approval. Ostensibly submitting to the committee would avoid all of the pitfalls such as unintended consequences by changes that affected other sections adversely and such.baldeagle wrote:Charles has much more experience with this than I, but I was intimately involved in a bill a few years back. I was shocked to discover that the bill was written by law students from Austin (they often serve on the staff of legislators) and the author of the bill had never even read it. Completely altered my view of the legislative process.JKTex wrote:If we're on the right track, my original question stands in regards to what he was saying. Not saying it is the case but I'm curious how often a good bill is written, and the sponsor(s) don't fully understand it. If that indeed does happen, it seems that is a problem from the onset. Just wondering out loud though. I may still be missing something.
I have since learned that bills are often written by lobbyists' lawyers and handed to a friendly legislator to promote. That's not necessarily a bad thing. If you will recall, Charles has stated that he wrote the CHL laws (by which I take it to mean that he drafted the legislation). But if the true authors of the bill misrepresent the contents of the bill or "forget" to mention a certain clause or phrase that benefits their clients, the legislator may be promoting something entirely different from what they thought they were promoting.
Sharp legislators can spot things like that and amend bills, but on some things only a lawyer can grasp the significance of a particular wording or phrase. That's why every legislator should have a legal staff to read through every bill and warn them about the issues they care about. And why we citizens must do our best to learn and understand the law.
My grandfather wrote the law, in NY State, pertaining to displaying the US flag just this way.
But not all legislators bothered to read what they submitted, and some hardly knew what they were getting into when they submitted stuff that was just a total mess.
