The recent conclusion of the Legislature’s formal session left me in some distress. So many good bills were left unfinished. The Legislature failed to complete its actions on climate (clean energy development), economic development, hospital oversight and drug prices.
Although majorities wanted the bills to pass, differences between the versions passed by Senate and House had to be hammered out in conference committees.
Usually, the existence of a deadline, such as the July 31 date for the ending of the formal session, would concentrate legislators’ minds and be a spur to action for getting bills passed. In this case there are multiple bills, all with the same deadline and with only two main decision makers, the Senate president and speaker of the house, and it was impossible for the bills to make timely progress through these bottlenecks.
To avoid this, it would be sensible to assign each bill its individual deadline. Bills go through several stages before they become law: a first reading, committee hearings, second reading and third reading in House and Senate. The assignment could be made when the bill is first reported out of committee when the complexity of the issue and possible points of conflict will have been identified.
The deadline should be reported publicly, and citizens and lobby groups can push the legislators to meet that deadline. Deadlines should be spread out so the Legislature has a good chance of meeting them all.
Martin G. Evans is a writer in Cambridge whose contributions on managerial and political issues have appeared in The Boston Globe, Cambridge Chronicle, MetroWest Daily News, Providence Journal, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail of Toronto, National Post of Toronto and the former Toronto Financial Post. He has taught at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, London Business School, George Mason University, Rutgers University and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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