THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 TAG: 9603190311
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY O'DELL, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
The 1996 General Assembly virtually guaranteed that next year's session will be a busy one by postponing action on nearly one-fifth of the 2,791 bills and resolutions introduced.
A final tally from the 62-day session that ended last week shows that 526 measures were put on hold until next year, when the Assembly is scheduled to meet for only 45 days. By the time the usual flood of new legislation is dumped into the hopper, lawmakers likely will be facing a huge workload.
``It's just ridiculous when you look at how much we have to consider,'' Del. J. Paul Councill Jr., D-Southampton, said Monday. ``There's no way you can give it adequate consideration.''
According to its own rules, the Assembly can carry over legislation from the longer, budget-dominated, even-year sessions. But then it has to dispose of the bills one way or another.
To lessen the impact after the session begins in January, the legislature has a self-imposed Dec. 20 deadline for committee action on bills. Still, bills that survive must be considered on the floor of the house where they originated before being sent to the other chamber.
The number of bills carried over grew steadily before peaking at 541 in 1994. Legislators frequently grumbled about the heavy workload in the next year's 45-day session.
Despite the complaints, legislators have steadfastly refused to limit the number of bills they can file. Del. Harry R. ``Bob'' Purkey, R-Virginia Beach, introduced legislation this year allowing each lawmaker to introduce no more than 12 bills or resolutions. It met the same fate as similar bills in the past: killed in committee.
``I wish everybody could just limit themselves voluntarily, but it's sort of hard to tell a person that if his constituents ask him to put in legislation to say no,'' said Councill, a member of the committee that killed Purkey's bill.
``A lot of people go overboard and put in too many bills just to build a track record,'' he said.
A bill generally is carried over for one of two reasons: to politely kill it, or to give legislators more time to study it.
Among the more controversial bills put off until 1997 were measures to either repeal last year's concealed-weapons law or make it even less restrictive.
Also postponed were bills to add homosexuals to the list of groups covered by the hate-crimes law, create an independent commission to nominate judges, force three exotic animal hunting preserves to close down, give teachers who discipline students immunity from lawsuits and make price-gouging after a disaster illegal. by CNB