The Legislature at work

The Legislators come to the State House on Mondays and Thursdays to get their work done. They usually have committee meetings and a session to attend. Today, I attended the Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing and the Senate State Government Assembly hearing. The Assembly Judiciary Committee heard bills on adding digital audio/video recording devices as illegal in movie theatres to the Anti-Piracy Act as well as a ball to criminalize the act of enticing or luring others to committ a crime over the internet. This bill is based on incidents in New Jersey where a man posed as housewives in chatrooms, posting their names and addresses, to have people to to their homes and hurt them.

The Senate State Government hearing was a rare joint session with the Assembly to hear bills on Pay-to-Play and election reforms. The Republicans have presented a plan, accusing Democracts of being too soft on election reform. Pay-to-Play is the name for the situation where contractors donate money to politican campaigns and then receive contracts in the future for it. What is interesting is that there is so much of a focus on this issue that half the bills reviewed in the hearing had not yet been introduced on the Senate or Assembly floor. One committee member's point is that How can they review these bills and approve them in committee if noone (legislators and the public) had not had a chance to even read them or analyze them yet. Most of these bills were approved by committee anyway.