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sider proposals designed to . ■ 'w \ improve the efficiency and ^ productivity of the General Assembly. The goal will be to preserve the part time, citizen character of the Assembly, while guaranteeing a process that is accessible and understandable to the people of Virginia.”
Unlike many earlier Common Cause efforts, this one has broad support, at least in the House. When it was dropped in the hopper, Gordon C. Morse, the organization’s executive director, had garnered 51 copatrons for the resolution. Its chief patron is Del. Tom Moss of Norfolk, the House Majority leader.
In its specifics, the resolution calls for the study group to be composed of 10 members. Four would be appointed by the Speaker of the House, three by the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee and three citizen members by the Governor. The group would examine, among other things, a number of proposals suggested by the National Conference of State Legislatures and report its recommendations to the 1984 session of the General Assembly.
Among the proposals to be examined would be the following:
Required notices of committee meetings with agendas,
Simple instructions for citizens desiring to testify,
Guidelines on bill referrals so citizens can keep track of them,
Summaries of complex bills including their fiscal impact,
A limit on the number of bills a member can introduce,
Limitations on duplicate bills,
Availability of “plain English” versions of bills,
Use of the “Consent Calendar” to save time by voting on non-controversial bills in a bloc. (The Senate already does this.)
Stricter control of, and better public access to proposed floor amendments to bills,
Publicized time and place of Conference Committee meetings, and
A more orderly flow of legislative work to eliminate the closing day crush and allow for a more thorough consideration of proposed measures.
“The General Assembly,” said Morse, “has travelled far beyond the point at which it would ignore the reality of the present situation. We will never see the day when the Assembly conducts its business in a perfectly tidy and orderly manner. Yet a study of the sort we propose may succeed in discovering ways of improving the chaotic conditions that now exist.”
Precisely to what degree - if at all - the lawmakers will go along with streamlining their operations and improving public access to them is not known. That answer must await the outcome of the study and the actions based on it which are utlimately taken.
But in the view of many Capitol observers - as well as clearly many of the lawmakers - Common Cause is on target with this one.
When it comes to addressing the problem of confusion in our legislative process, about the only direction left to go is up.
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