BY Tom Sheehan
Lee Newspapers Madison Bureau
MADISON — Wisconsin legislators are full of good ideas — at least ideas they think are good for someone:
If Rep. Amy Sue Vruwink, D-Millador, and Sen. Julie Lassa, D-Stevens Point, had their way, you could be fined $1,000 for selling a “yo-yo waterball, or any similar toy consisting of a rubber-like object that is attached to an elastic cord.”
Rep. Marlin Schneider D-Wisconsin Rapids, would make it illegal to sell a printer with a “starter” toner cartridge.
Sen. Ron Brown, R-Eau Claire, would have you fined up to $40 for driving over a fire hose at the scene of a fire department practice burn.
Rep. Frank Boyle, D-Superior, would rename the state Public Service Commission as the “Utility Service Commission.”

Bursting with bills
Those are among more the 1,730 bills lawmakers introduced this session as of Friday that have little, if any chance, of becoming law — only Schneider’s bill has even had a hearing.
Yet bills keep piling up at a near-record pace. With two months to go in the general business floor period, legislators already have introduced more bills than any one of the past four sessions. And behind the scenes, they’ll ask the Legislative Reference Bureau to draft thousands of other pieces of legislation, including other bills, resolutions, amendments and budget items they’ll never introduce.
At the end of last week, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle had signed 122 bills, putting the state’s enactment rate — the number introduced, compared with the number signed into laws — at about 7 percent since the two-year session began in January 2005. That compares with a 19.1 percent average enactment rate at the end of each of the last six sessions, figures compiled by the bureau show.
The percentage, no doubt, will improve significantly as legislators make a dash to get bills through before the end of the general business floor period May 4 — the Senate and Assembly together passed more than 130 bills last week. And more than 100 bills in all await Doyle’s signature.
But there are signs legislators are having trouble keeping up with the crush of bills. And the average citizen would probably need to hire a veteran lobbyist to be in the right place at the right time for public comment.
Last week, the Legislature held more than 50 committee hearings or meetings on more than 200 bills, including 26 meetings on 135 bills on Wednesday alone. Most legislators were expected to be at several meetings at once, as well as on the floor and at party caucus meetings Tuesday and Thursday.
“It seems a little nuts, but this is the system, and this is still the best system in the world,” said first-term Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse.
Kapanke, who heads the Assembly Committee on Agriculture and Insurance, said during the Senate’s floor session Thursday that he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to be at three or four committee meetings on Wednesday. He relies heavily on staffers help keep him informed and up to date, Kapanke said.

Part of the job
Legislators defend their ideas, large and small, saying they want to protect public safety, solve a problem or help a constituent. Some Democrats, who are in the minority in the Senate and Assembly, say introducing a bill sometimes is the only way they can bring attention to an issue — even if the bill will never become law.
While each proposal takes time and resources to develop, some current and former legislative leaders say the system is working, even if some bills are publicity stunts or aimed at pleasing just one constituent.
The onslaught of narrow-interest bills, however, suggests legislators are busy trying to keep their full-time jobs instead of solving bigger problems, said Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
“I think sometimes we lose the forest for the trees .... When you have a full-time Legislature like Wisconsin does, you’re going to get this kind of behavior,” Berry said.
Legislators sometimes also are eager to please some individuals or groups that may want research done by legislative researchers and analysts, Berry said.
“I do know that there are a number of interest groups that will go through a legislator to take advantage of what the legislator can ask for,” Berry said.
The bureau is not allowed by law disclose information about drafting requests, including the number made by individual legislators, said Reference Bureau Director Stephen Miller. But based on previous sessions, legislators likely will ask for more than 10,000 drafts by the end of the year. As of Feb. 1, the bureau in all had delivered to legislators 5,900 drafts, 2,885 of which had been introduced, documents prepared for one legislator show.
The legislative process has a way of regulating itself, said Joseph Strohl, a Democrat who served as Senate Majority Leader from 1987 to 1990. Legislative leaders and committee heads determine which bills make progress and weed out weaker proposals, Strohl said.
Bills that don’t stand a chance of passage often won’t even get a hearing, so little time and resources are wasted, said Strohl, who had represented the Racine area and is now a Madison-based lobbyist.
More bills are being introduced this session, in part, because legislators have been doing a better job of keeping policy out of the state budget, Strohl said.
Strohl admits having been annoyed by state symbol bills, which take up time but have little real value, he said. This session is no exception — Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz, R-Menomonee Falls, introduced a bill to designate an official state tartan, or unique plaid pattern to go along with other official state symbols, such as a dance, a soil, a bird and a dog.
Former Rep. DuWayne Johnsrud, R-Eastman, said he was “one of the guilty ones” when it came to introducing or drafting legislation with little chance of becoming law.
As former head of the Assembly Natural Resources Committee, Johnsrud said he was often asked to draft legislation on behalf of state agencies. Legislators also want to please constituents who may have little understanding of the political process, Johnsrud said.
Constituents don’t want to hear that nothing can be done — they just want to know a legislator is doing something, Johnsrud said. Some constituents mistakenly assume, however, that once a bill is drafted that it will become law, which can lead to uncomfortable exchanges when it doesn’t happen, Johnsrud said.
Even if a legislator has a good proposal and enough votes lined up to pass a bill on the floor, legislative leaders tightly control what gets through, Johnsrud said. Some bills languish without action for months, while others can make it through the entire process in days if a key leader supports it, Johnsrud said.

Making a point
Just because a bill seems trivial or stands little chance of becoming law doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be introduced, said Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids. So far this session, Schneider has introduced more than 61 bills or resolutions, more than any other legislator. Just two have made it through the Assembly.
“Sometimes by just introducing a bill, you can force change,” Schneider said.
Schneider said he introduced the proposed ban on starter ink cartridges because the manufacture of a printer he bought failed to indicate a cartridge was just partially filled on the box.
“If this sort of thing catches on, they will change their marketing behaviors .... They say no one state can do that. Well, one state can do that,” Schneider said. Printer manufacturers frequently tweak labeling, so the requirement wouldn’t be burdensome, Schneider said.
Rep. Sheryl Albers, R-Reedsburg, said she’ll be happy if just five or six of the 36 bills she introduced make it to the governor’s desk. “I look for every door there is,” Albers said.
Albers said most of her bills are prompted by local concerns, such as how to help a local drainage district, while some other legislators rely heavily on industry or interest groups to prompt legislation.
Introduction of a bill that has a chance of becoming law typically triggers a series of events, including committee hearings, meetings and in-depth research by attorneys, policy experts and fiscal analysts.
Many proposals are redrafted several times before taking final form. Some bills are re-introduced session after session, or sometimes during the same session. Republicans for example, have re-introduced bills this session on medical malpractice caps and product liability reform that were vetoed by Doyle.
Last session, Doyle vetoed in whole 54 bills — more than any Wisconsin governor since 1963 and more than the previous six legislative sessions combined, the Wisconsin Blue Book shows.
“His complaint is not the volume of bills that they focus on but sometimes they don’t focus on the most important ones,” said Dan Leistikow, a spokesman for the governor.
Johnsrud said party leaders from either side like to keep issues in front of voters and appeal to their base, even if they know legislation won’t become law.

Cost and quality
Calculating the cost of legislation is difficult because each proposal varies dramatically in terms of research, legal complexity and meetings. Schneider’s printer cartridge bill, for example, is two pages, including a plain-language analysis. A bill that would have lifted a ban on concealed weapons reached 66 pages, excluding amendments.
In many cases, matching bills are introduced in each house, but one proposal is dropped during the process. That means some research doesn’t have to be duplicated, but some committee hearings and meetings may be.
Assembly Majority Leader Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, said he worries more about making sure the right bills get to the floor for a vote than the number introduced. “It’s a meaningless figure (introductions) because, many times, a legislator gets a bill drafted at the behest of a constituent, even though they know it’s not going to get passed,” Huebsch said.
As gatekeeper of the Assembly, Huebsch asks representatives to list their legislative priorities when bills start piling up. Huebsch said he can tell if a legislator is serious by how hard he or she works.
If a bill stands a chance of becoming law, it must be pushed for from the time it’s introduced through the time it might be signed by the governor, Huebsch said. Constituents who may be affected by a bill also must be informed or a legislator may alienate them, Huebsch said.
The state in perspective
Wisconsin is one of seven states with no limit on the number or timing of bill introductions, according to the Council of State Governments’ “2005 Book of States,” which tracks legislative trends.
About 20 houses of legislatures in other states limit the timing of bill introductions to help spread the workload better throughout a session, said Brenda Erickson, a research analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. In some cases, rules don’t apply to all bills, and rules can be overridden with enough support.
Colorado has a limit of five bills per year, excluding appropriation bills, and Louisiana has a constitutional limit of five bills once a session begins, Erickson found in a review of legislatures nationwide.
The Wisconsin Legislature does not need a limit, which can stifle a legislator’s ability to represent constituents, said Sen. Majority Leader Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center. “Everybody has a right to have their issue discussed,” Schultz said.
Wisconsin is not unusual among states in terms of the number of bills introduced, Erickson said.
By comparison, New York legislators introduced 14,000 bills, more than in any other state in 2004. Of those, 729 were signed into law for an enactment rate of 4.2 percent. Idaho had the best percentage, enacting 389 of 619 bills, or 63 percent of those introduced that year. New Jersey had the lowest enactment rate at 3.3 percent. Nationwide, the average was about 17 percent, although several states failed to report figures, Erickson said.