{"id":15848,"date":"2017-01-22T07:37:45","date_gmt":"2017-01-22T14:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=15848"},"modified":"2017-01-22T07:37:45","modified_gmt":"2017-01-22T14:37:45","slug":"prairie-lights-in-helena-no-lack-of-puzzling-bill-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/01\/prairie-lights-in-helena-no-lack-of-puzzling-bill-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"Prairie Lights: In Helena, no lack of puzzling bill ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ole<\/a>

Ed Kemmick<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time on the Montana Legislature\u2019s website<\/a> since the session began almost three weeks ago, mostly looking at bill drafts.<\/p>\n

A few days ago, I scanned through the descriptions of all 2,546 introduced and unintroduced bills<\/a>, wondering whether our esteemed lawmakers had any of the usual crazy ideas in the wings.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t claim to have read every word of every bill description, but I didn\u2019t see anything downright lunatic\u2014no bills about having to pay off debts in gold, no bills urging Montana secede from the Union, etc., the kinds of bills that used to make us famous.<\/p>\n

As usual, however, I found plenty of bills that made me scratch my head, including one that said simply, \u201cRevise Montana wool laboratory laws.\u201d Montana has a wool laboratory, or even multiple wool laboratories? Is there a separate cashmere research facility?<\/p>\n

Or how about this bill description: \u201cExclude certain bees from per capita livestock fee.\u201d Wait, does this mean that there is an existing per capita livestock fee on bees? And why are only \u201ccertain\u201d bees going to be excluded from the fee? And who in the hell has the job of counting the bees on which this fee is to be paid?<\/p>\n

I also look forward to debates over bills to \u201crevise laws related to Styrofoam\u201d and to \u201cextend milk regulations to hoofed mammals.\u201d And thank God someone is finally going to \u201cgenerally revise laws related to pore space.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are some bills whose descriptions are so simple and their intent so apparently noble that it\u2019s hard to imagine anyone voting against them, including \u201cprevent human trafficking,\u201d \u201cenact protections for Yellowstone River\u201d and \u201cproviding protections to vulnerable persons from financial exploitation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>The devil is in the details, though. If protecting the Yellowstone River were to include a ban on out-of-state billionaires building streamside mansions, it might not pass. And in regard to financial exploitation, I suppose there is going to be some debate over the definition of \u201cvulnerable persons.\u201d Bernie Madoff swindled some pretty savvy people.<\/p>\n

If you were unfamiliar with Montana, or with the lingo of legislation, what would you make of a proposal to \u201cextend sunset for paddlefish caviar program\u201d? You might think our overly attentive legislators were hoping to create a special daylight-saving time just for fish eggs.<\/p>\n

The award for thinking big\u2014make that thinking too big for your britches\u2014goes to the legislator who proposes to \u201cprohibit state contracts to entities that boycott Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legislative overreach is apparent in several other bill proposals, including one that would \u201callow Legislators to conceal or open carry handguns on state property.\u201d Beautiful idea! I would only amend it to include \u201cand allow legislators to menacingly brandish a handgun during floor debates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there is the proposal to \u201crequire students to take a citizenship test.\u201d Fine, as long as legislators themselves are also required to take the test. I wouldn\u2019t insist on this if I hadn\u2019t heard\u2014and I am not making this up\u2014that some of our state legislators were not aware that \u201cObamacare\u201d and the Affordable Care Act were the same thing.<\/p>\n

A somewhat related bill would \u201callow random inspection of public premises, public schools for illegal drugs.\u201d Fine, as long as police officers in full combat gear with German shepherds make a twice-weekly sweep of the state House and Senate, including all meeting rooms.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, another bill would \u201cestablish requirements for police dogs.\u201d Does this mean there are no requirements for police dogs under existing law? That\u2019s probably why one so often sees police dogs lounging around smoking cigarettes and watching TV.<\/p>\n

One thing I do love about our Legislature is that House Bill 1, the bill that appropriates the money needed for the operation of the legislative session, is still described simply as \u201cfeed bill.\u201d Maybe this is common elsewhere, but I admire the plainness of the phrase, the complete lack of ostentation.<\/p>\n

For similar reasons, I like the bill description that reads \u201ccreate a soda pop tax.\u201d A bill description that sounds almost like a song title is off to a pretty good start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time on the Montana Legislature\u2019s website since the session began almost three weeks ago, mostly looking at bill drafts. A few days ago, I scanned through the descriptions of all 2,546 introduced and unintroduced bills, wondering whether our esteemed lawmakers had any of the usual crazy ideas in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5410,1122,5411,5409],"class_list":["post-15848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prairie-lights","tag-hoofed-animals","tag-montana-legislature","tag-pore-space","tag-wool-laboratory","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}