As many of us already know from “Schoolhouse Rock!” and hopefully civics courses, bills are important to the legislative process because they have the opportunity to become state law. Then there are resolutions, which largely serve as the throat-clearing vehicles of the Louisiana Legislature.
Resolutions help lawmakers make decisions that do have the force of law, or they can be used clearly as state policy goals, make declarations or simply express the opinion of the body, writes Jeremy Alford in his new opinion piece. Legislators can likewise use resolutions to change the rules of the House and Senate.
As of Tuesday morning there were 35 resolutions introduced for the regular session, compared to 1,124 bills. That resolution tally will grow. By the end of the last term-starting session in 2016, lawmakers filed 760 resolutions. Unlike bills, which have filing deadlines, most all resolutions can be introduced at any time during a session.
Then there are ideas, which are harder to track. One idea that was intended to become a resolution but may never see the light of day involves lawmakers removing members of the working media from their coveted spots on the House and Senate floors, located along two banks of desks between the speaker’s perch and the general membership.
“I won’t be filing the resolution for this, but depending on how it’s worded, I would certainly consider supporting it,” said Rep. Alan Seabaugh, R-Shreveport, adding he once fell victim to a reporter who overheard his private remarks to a colleague and who quoted him in a story. “It affects how we communicate with each other.”
Whether Louisiana becomes the eighth state to greatly restrict media access to a chamber remains to be seen. There have been some rumblings about a resolution providing for a designated area outside of the rails, but no one interviewed for this piece offered specifics.
Read Alford’s full column for more about the resolutions, and the potentioal changes in how journalists cover the Legislature.
Jeremy Alford publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, atLaPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter, or on Facebook. He can be reached at JJA@LaPolitics.com.
