Rarely do lawmakers tangle over procedural issues on Day 1 of the session. But on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Sen. Peter Galbraith let it be known that he, for one, was none too pleased with the appointment of a free-standing committee to oversee his chamber’s legislative redistricting process.
Galbraith, a Windham County Democrat on the Senate Committee on Government Operations, had been under the impression that his five-member committee would be handling reapportionment.
The House, after all, leaves that task to its government operations committee.
Upon learning that the Senate would in fact appoint a separate, seven-person panel to oversee what promises to be a controversial process, Galbraith let loose on Senate President John Campbell.
“I think in fact this can only be interpreted as a vote of no-confidence in the committee on government operations and its chair,” Galbraith said.
Read the full post, Galbraith ripped over loss of reapportionment duties.
This post came from Vermont View, a blog featuring news and perspective on Green Mountain politics and government written by the staff of the Vermont Press Bureau - Vermont's local state news service since 1935.
Generally speaking, it's unwise to make policy with constitutional amendments. A constitution is -- or should be -- a framework for government, a set of fundamental principles that provides the foundation for lawmaking. When the constitution is used to control policy decisions, the results often are problematic.
Posted by: plumbing | 01/04/2012 at 10:17 AM