Legislative Update / Note to Joe Hoeffel

The state legislature did examine a few bills this week but no actions were taken.

Mr. Hoeffel, in the blogger teleconference that was discussed in some earlier postings in this blog and others, said he wanted to have legislative updates on his site.

I try to keep up with this but it is VERY tricky. You can visit the state legislature's web site and request to receive daily updates on what happens in the legislature. These emails will tell you what bills were introduced, amended, tabled, passed, etc. You can access a copy of the bill electronically or as a link through the email. At times nothing happens, other times over a hundred bills will be introduced or handled in a day. Try as I might I can't keep up with it, although I try to report any bills that have passed.

As as been mentioned here and in other places, Rep. Mark Cohen has a blog that discusses some legislation going through the system. He updated his blog this past Friday.

Keystone Politics and PoliticsPA also sometimes post notes about current legislation.

This is all catch as catch can. Much as I admire and respect Rep. Cohen for being, as far as I can tell, the ONLY elected state representative to provide this service to, not only his constituents, but the state generally, there is only so much he can cover or take the time to type.

Mr. Hoeffel mentioned linking to single issue interest groups that provide legislative information. I have tried to look into these. Most are lobbying groups or government relations arms of professional organizations (I'm not sure there is a difference but I don't want to get sued if there is). Take for example, the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA). Their goverment relations committee provides a weekly update on legislative issues. This week's update can be found here. However, if you take a look at the URL it changes week by week. This means to create a useful link to it, you have to update it weekly, unless you just link to the goverment relations page and instruct people to click on the update link on the left hand column. Considering the number of groups like this that may or may not provide legislative updates, your average citizen would have to check a number of sites weekly and click on the right spot to get the right information. You also have to keep in mind that those presenting the information may not have the most objective viewpoint.

This is just on legislation under consideration. Voting records, oy, I've blogged on that previously. It's public information, you just can't get it in any kind of timely manner.

I really think we should all ask every single state level candidate to do something about this situation.