Bill filing deadline is February 1st, but as we gather information and read the bills that are already filed, we are starting to get an idea for what we will face this year. This week, we want to highlight two areas that we think will see some movement before the end of the session, Procedural Bills and Open Government.
Procedural Bills - These are tough to get excited about but have an oversized impact on environmental health. These bills appear to be aimed at processes, not specific results. For instance, a procedural bill might seek to set up a situation favorable to special interests without codifying the advantage of special interests.
The stormwater regulation bill, as amended, is a good example. It doesn't specifically require that industry be given a handout but it seeks to change the process so a very industry-friendly committee gets veto power over relevant regulations. There is a high threat from these bills this year. Please be ready to take action on them.
There are also open government advocates seeking to remedy caption bill abuse. Bills in the Tennessee General Assembly can be amended to do anything within the scope of the part of the Tennessee Code that the bill cited in the first place. The problem is the public doesn't have access to those amendments until after the they have been officially put on the bill in committee which severely limits our ability to impact legislation. We are hoping to address that.
Unfortunately, the stormwater runoff regulation bill advanced from committee. The environmental community showed up though! Before we started calling and emailing, this bill was going to sail through. We are making people think twice. It might be up for a vote in the full Senate as early as Thursday.
Senator Bell has a good bill for open records coming up in Senate Government Operations Committee. It requires certain agencies proposing rule changes "to make copies of the rule available in redline form..."
Currently, when advocates see new rules, they have to try and guess what the new rule takes out. That is a very tedious and error-prone process. The "redline form" of the rule will highlight in red the deleted parts of the rule. This is a big step forward for open government.
