J. Nelson – Writer

… is just as bad

If you follow any person or organization that follows the West Virginia Legislature’s progress, then you’ve probably noticed that certain bill numbers crop up again and again (like SB 460, HB 2400, HB 2006). That’s because these bills are of public interest, and bill-watchers are doing their best to spread the word about what the legislation is and how it impacts West Virginians.

But lawmakers are sneaky. (Or just really bad at communication.) They like to introduce identical or similar legislation under different bill numbers. For example, there is the “Mountain Bike Responsibility Act,” which appears as four separate bills: HB 2707, HB 3342, SB 142, and SB 595. (To be clear, I have not read these bills, so there could be differences between them, but they all have a variation of the same short title.)

Now, it’s common (and accepted) practice for lawmakers to introduce a bill into each chamber, which naturally results in two different bill numbers and even different short titles. This increases the chance of getting a piece of legislation passed.

Unfortunately, it can make things harder for bill-watchers. Some of us maintain our sanity by monitoring only one chamber (and collaborating with others to watch the other) or only focus on legislation that is moving.

Sometimes, though, that means we (and by “we” I am referring to myself on this one) don’t always notice when the same bill with a different name or number gains traction.

Such is the case with the anti-transgender bill “defining ‘men’ and ‘women.’” You may remember that last week I highlighted HB 2006 on my list of bills. Well, it has a Senate equivalent: SB 456, which somehow quietly passed in the Senate late last week and is already on second reading in the House of Delegates. (By the way, one of the Senate’s two Democrats — Sen. Mike Woelfel — co-sponsored this discriminatory bill.)

You might also remember SB 51, to remove the exceptions for rape and incest from West Virginia’s already incredibly strict abortion law. The sponsor of SB 51 withdrew his bill after public pressure. Unfortunately, the same bill was reintroduced by two other lawmakers: Sen. Patricia Rucker introduced SB 608 and delegates Lisa White, Chris Anders, and Elias Coop-Gonzalez introduced HB 2712.

I also previously talked about a bill to prohibit ranked choice voting. Turns out there are five of them: SB 133, SB 226, SB 490, HB 2408, and HB 2683.

I can’t decide if this is more like a game of whack-a-mole, where every time you hit one, another pops up, or like fighting a hydra, where every time you cut off one head, two more take its place.

I sadly don’t have time to list out every bill that has multiple iterations, so the point of today’s post is to tell you: no, you aren’t crazy — we really did work to kill a bad or stupid bill just for the same legislation to come up again with a different number.

It’s frustrating and exhausting, but fighting the good fight usually is. Y’all know what to do: Call and write your representatives and tell them a horrible bill by any other name is still a horrible bill.