May Pennsylvania House Journals

This post will catch us up with the available Pennsylvania House Journals. I do them by month and June is not yet complete. Since the list of bills that have passed the state house or senate are listed each week in the weekly legislative update, these posts note specifically interesting discussions or happenings.

In May the House met in full session on four days, May 1, 2, 3, 8. The journal for the 8th is only 2 pages long.

On May 1st(28 pages long), Rep. Vitali speaks on a resolution regarding Darfur (p. 9 of the pdf, 989 of the print version). Later (p. 19 pdf, 999 print), Rep. Vitali introduces an amendment to make information collected by red light cameras to be made public.

The May 2nd issue (17 p.) is devoted in large part to the swearing in of Rep. Sean Flaherty.

May 3rd (58 p.) was a busy day. On pages 19-23 of the pdf, 1047-1051 of the print version, there is a discussion of voting regulations, polling places, and so forth. Reps. Cohen, Josephs and Leach speak against the legislation. Rep. S. Smith speaks in favor. There is mention of voting in the Fumo Family Library, which sort of sounds like there is a voting machine in Vince's drawing room, but it turns out that the Fumo Family Library is a public library. Now we know.

Later, on pp. 35-41 of the pdf, and 1063-1069 of the print, there is a lengthy and sometimes harsh but telling discussion of the denial of state college grants to students with certain alcohol violations. I understand the thinking behind it and that young adults who make other mistakes face more serious consequences, but some of the people arguing for this must have lived exemplary lives in their youth to show such little understanding. Those arguing against point out, in part, that students from lower income families would suffer the most.

Showing the broad range of issues the state legislature addresses, we go from college drinking to spyware. On pages 1080-1084 of the print, 52-56 of the pdf, spyware is exactly what is discussed.

As soon as June is complete I'll report in on it.