Health & Fitness
What Was the Problem with HB 135?
It became obvious that as soon as we began talking about this bill inthe House that people had no idea what it really said, and now I know where the fault lies.
Actually the fault, and thus the anger, around this bill and others has two main causes: Citizens haven't been taught how the process at the State House works; and there are organizations that use that lack of knowledge to manipulate us, and boy oh boy, did people ever have some bad information about it.
So that at least you'll know the process, let's break this down...
1) A Rep. gets an idea for a bill, they take it to Legislative Services, who finds the spot it fits in our law books and writes up a bill that they think the originator wants.
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2) The bill is assigned to a Committee who then schedule a Public Hearing where every single person who wants to speak gets their voice heard.
3) The Committee holds discussions on the bill in the Executive Meeting where they can also call on anyone to answer further questions.
Find out what's happening in Nashuafor free with the latest updates from Patch.
4) Amendments are offered along the way to do anything from fixing the language for misspellings to total re-writes. This can often leave the originator scratching their head because they might no longer recognize their bill.
5) The Committee makes a recommendation and sends it to the full House.
So what was the problem with HB 135? It was "OTP with Amendment." That means that the Committee – after all their study of the bill, listening to what the originator wanted changed and what they were hoping would be the outcome, listening to hours and hours of testimony from citizens, and looking at problems cause by the wording of the law in other states – felt that HB 135 OUGHT TO PASS with AMENDMENT not on its own.
Not the bill as it was originally written, but only with the amendment, and unless you know how to find the bill and read the amendments, you are simply not going to have all the information.
So here is the treasure chest....
This is the docket page for HB 135.
All the information we have will be on the bill's docket page.
Every bill has a docket page, and every citizen should know how to access it and how to use it.
