In The Loop- January 17, 2025
Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
The title of my article from this week is from Mark Twain who once famously said there are three types of lies in life. How that runs on a parallel track with one stat of the session is very interesting.
The legislative session in less than two weeks has already filed over 1,000 pieces of legislation and is on track to eclipse past records for the most proposed and committee bill counts of any legislation session date.
That said, this stat can be deceiving on a number of different levels so it’s important to consider the following when hearing it for the first time:
(1) There are some representatives and senators that have filed on their own a lion’s share of this total number. Senator Rob Sampson (R-Southington) has filed 211 bills this session which won’t even include the total number of amendments that will likely be filed on bills during the year.
(2) In a long session, both proposed and committee bills are able to advance and be adopted. This is in comparison to the short session which requires vetting by committees to determine what bills should be drafted.
(3) While the deadline for filing a proposed bill is today, the raised committee bill deadline is February 19th and 20th respectively so there’s a good chance a lot of the proposed bills that have been drafted could find their way into other committee bills being raised.
It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the volume but consider these factors as we report on introduced legislation this year.