“The 2009 legislative session began Tuesday. All bills to be considered during the 60-day session were to be filed no later than that day. The deadline allows the public and lawmakers to know what's ahead and be prepared more effectively to advocate for a bill or oppose it. Some 800 bills were filed in the House and more than 1,000 in the Senate. They're all listed and linked to their details on the chambers' respective websites, including sponsors, purpose and the bill's language. On the Senate side, almost 100 bills provide no such details -- no purpose, no bill language. Just a sponsor and vague language, such as ‘legislative intent to revise laws relating to governmental operations.’ Those are ‘shell bills,’ so called because all they provide is the structure for eventual bill language to be filled in later. When, exactly, is a mystery. So is the purpose. ‘Government operations,’ ‘economic development,’ ‘financial services,’ ‘insurance’ and ‘open records’ are vast, vague areas that can affect anything from tax laws to environmental regulation to public access to government documents. With hundreds of shell bills filed under those categories, it's difficult for the public to track measures until it may be too late to respond effectively once the language is filled in. Shell bills can serve a useful purpose. They're placeholders for what could potentially be good law that hasn't yet been formulated. They're also ways to skirt the democratic process, locking out or minimizing public participation while getting around the filing deadline for bills.
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Thanks to Mark Pudlow for the clip and the lead.