Legislative agenda: golf carts, car colors, outhouses
By Stacy Tyler
Each legislative session, the General Assembly is presented with thousands of bills and joint resolutions. Most of them deal with big issues, such as health care and education. But some address such issues as the color of police cars or the rights of golf-cart drivers.Bills on the lighter side often have a more difficult time surviving than those addressing more serious issues. Most don’t make it past “crossover day,” which this session was Feb. 12. By that day, legislation must win approval from the House or Senate to advance to the opposite chamber – or it’s pronounced dead.
One of the most talked about “wacky” bills of the session suffered that very fate. House Bill 1452, sponsored by Delegate Lionell Spruill Sr., D-Chesapeake, would have banned the display of trailer-hitch ornaments that resemble bull testicles. It failed to make it past crossover day.
But some of the more creative bills still are alive this session and have a chance of being passed before the assembly adjourns March 8. Those bills include:
* HB 33 – A bill to allow vehicles of the sheriffs’ office to be painted solid colors other than brown or white. The bill is sponsored by Delegate Riley E. Ingram, R-Hopewell.
* SB 600 – A bill by Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-Williamsburg, to issue revenue-sharing license plates that say “LIVE DRUG FREE.” The plates would be $25. After the first 1,000 plates sell, $15 of every subsequent fee would go to the SpiritWorks Foundation Center for the Soul, a recovery-community organization in Williamsburg.
* SB 165 – A bill by Sen. Richard H. Stuart, R-Montross, to allow golf carts to cross highways at crosswalks and intersections controlled by traffic lights where the speed limit is 35 mph or less.
* SB 784 – A bill by Sen. R Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, to have ABC stores sell magazines educating the public about the Virginia wine industry.
A number of resolutions attempt to designate a specific month or day to an organization or cause that the patron strongly supports.
House Joint Resolution 131, sponsored by Delegate Edward T. Scott, R-Culpeper, would designate April 27 through May 3, 2008, as “Plumbing Industry Week.” Senate Joint Resolution 24, by Sen. Frank M. Ruff, R-Clarksville, would declare October as Dyslexia Awareness Month.
And House Joint Resolution 76 would recognize the town of Independence as the official home of the Grand Privy Race in Virginia. The resolution is sponsored by Delegate Charles W. Carrico Sr., R-Independence. The Grand Privy Race has its contestants put outhouses on wheels to race down the streets in the center of town.
Even Virginia Commonwealth University has its own resolution. Sen. A. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond, wants July 1, 2008, to be designated “Virginia Commonwealth University Day.”