(Thank you for this report on today's session, Lucy. It seems there are some cracks in the majority veneer.
"ITL" means Inexpedient to Legislate or kill the bill.
(Part put below the fold by me) - promoted by Jennifer Daler)
For those keeping score, I thought I'd give a summary of how the House session went today. We had eleven bills on the regular calendar, plus four bills removed from the consent calendar.
In hindsight, it is a good thing that we started with the bill naming a bridge in Merrimack in honor of Corporal Timothy Gibson, U.S.M.C, who was killed in action in Iraq in 2005. That was an accomplishment.
The proceedings quickly got more difficult. All three bills on the regular calendar from Criminal Justice were recommitted. This means they were sent back to the committee for more work. By way of explanation, recommittal used to be a relatively rare occurrence, used when new information was brought to the committee's attention after the bill had been sent to the floor, or when an "unintended consequence" was suddenly discovered to the dismay of the committee. Three in one day is unusual.
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The next bill, from Election Law, was recommended Inexpedient to Legislate (ITL). Those members of the majority party who had not gotten their way, mounted a huge floor fight to get the bill recommitted to the committee so they could try again. The debate took 25 minutes, and featured an explanation of how voting is done in Australia, which I gather was important for us to understand because this bill does not use that method. The motion to recommit was eventually defeated, 68-272, after which the bill was ITLed, 303-44.
The Fish and Game bill was recommitted.
At this point, for some reason I missed, we jumped to one of the bills removed from the consent calendar. These are usually heard at the end of the session. This was a bill that had been recommended ITL, but again, those members of the majority who favored the bill wanted to overturn the committee report so they could offer a floor amendment. Eventually the ITL was approved by a vote of 241-102.
Back on the regular calendar, the Judiciary bill passed on a voice vote.
Then two more ITLs, and then two bills actually passed, one having to do with boating accidents and one with boat exhaust systems.
From the consent calendar, another recommit request from Criminal Justice, and then a Republican actually got an ITL recommendation overturned, after which (you guessed it) the bill was recommitted.
The final two bills were ones I removed from the consent calendar, not because of substance, necessarily, but because I could not tell from the blurb in the calendar what the bills actually did.
The first blurb said that only one word in the statute had been changed, but a reading of the proposed amendment showed that a whole new section had been added in to the statute. No mention of this new addition was made in the blurb at all. The second bill was described as a housekeeping bill, which is always a red flag. When the dust settled, the committee Chair had explained the first bill, and it passed, but he wound up asking that part of the housekeeping bill be voted down, as it might have some problems which had not been spotted before.
So, of 16 bills total, 6 were recommitted, 3 ITLs, and 6 bills passed in three hours and 45 minutes.
Almost all the floor fights were between Republicans. Oh, did I fail to mention that none of the bills that actually passed appear likely to affect either jobs or the economy? But some of us will be spending more time studying the carrying of crossbows, rifles and shotguns in automobiles.
I am told we still have 381 House bills to be acted upon by the end of the month.
Now that is focused like a laser. Stay tuned.
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