There Oughta Be a Law (or not)
February 26th, 2009 at 1:26 pm by Jim Shella under Jim Shella's Political Blog
I moderated a discussion by a panel of lawmakers last week where someone in the audience suggested that there is no need for new laws. Take a year off, he said, maybe two.
I explained that there is a need for a new state budget, if nothing more, and one lawmaker suggested that most of the new laws are really revisions to existing portions of the Indiana code. Therefore, there are not exactly “new laws.”
Nevertheless, House Speaker Pat Bauer reports that the Indiana House passed 243 bills in the first half of the 2009 session (120 in the last three days.)
If that sounds like a lot, consider that it is just one-third of the bills that filed at the beginning of the session.
Tags: Pat Bauer
Wouldn’t a bill to repeal laws be a new law?
I’ve never bought the notion that we simply don’t need any more laws. I can think of scores of laws I’d like to see passed. For example, I think we need a law that government contracts include in them a provision saying that if the government contractor is found to have filed a SLAPP lawsuit against someone who speaks out about the contract, they lose their contract.