J. Nelson – Writer

The West Virginia Legislature started its regular session yesterday, and, as always, there were hundreds of bills introduced — ranging from helpful to asinine to destructive.

That’s par for the course. In the first couple weeks of a legislative session, politicians introduce myriad bills they know will go absolutely nowhere; it’s all peacocking for their base, so they can pad their bona fides come campaign season. This is especially true of the most base culture war bills you’ll see crop up.

After years of monitoring the statehouse, here’s the best advice I can give to you keep your sanity: When a bad bill is introduced, note it but don’t panic until it starts moving.

There will be thousands of bills introduced in the next 40 days. Only a few hundred of them will get any traction while most of them will die in committee without so much as a first read.

With so many different things competing for our attention, we must conserve our energy. We can’t swing at every foul ball, or we’ll be too exhausted to function by the time we reach the ninth inning.  

If there’s a piece of legislation that hits close to home for you — whether it be in a good way or a bad way — note the bill number and periodically check on its progress. If it’s a good bill that’s stalled in committee for a while, start advocating to get it to the next reading or passed out of committee. If it’s a bad bill that’s already gotten a reading or two, start advocating to have it killed.

So how do you keep track?

If you’re looking to simply keep informed, local news organizations will cover most bills as they are introduced and will follow the progress of select bills that statehouse reporters believe to be most consequential.

But if you’re looking to do something, there are also dozens of groups that will be doing the hard work of following key bills. For example, the League of Women Voters of West Virginia (a nonpartisan advocacy group) will be closely following legislation and when something good or bad happens, they’ll send out a “Make Some Noise” alert. You can either join the League or follow LWV-WV on Facebook to get alerts on legislation and other government activity.

If you’re not in West Virginia, there’s a very good chance you have a state or local League of Women Voters chapter in your area. (By the way, LWV is not a women-only group; men who care about democracy, voting rights, and human rights are more than welcome to join.) And if you don’t an LWV chapter, you definitely have a similar group operating in your state who is tracking your state government.

Or, you can track it yourself. For West Virginians, go to wvlegislature.gov. From the top toolbar, select “Bill Status” (then “Bill Status” again). On the next page, there will be a search bar and a menu list. You can use the search bar to look for an individual bill if you know its number (don’t put “HB” or “SB” — just put the number). Or you can use the lefthand menu to search for a wider swath of bills, like House bills, bills that have passed committee, bills that have passed one chamber, etc.

There is a slightly easier way to track bills on the West Virginia Legislature website: you can use the “Bill Tracking” function, but it requires you to create a login. If you take that route, you can set up categories and assign bills you are following to those categories. Your bill tracker will then automatically update with each bill’s progress as it moves through the Legislature.

(For my out-of-state readers: There’s a good chance your statehouse has a similar website and feature, if this is the route you choose to take.)

For the average citizen, though, my advice: Follow the groups who are doing the hard work — on social media, through their newsletter or Substack, etc. — then be prepared to step up and act when they send out the alert that a specific piece of legislation is moving.