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Wednesday, July 07, 2004

Law - Interesting look at bill drafting mistake in Virginia

A story today in the Washington Post reports:

RICHMOND, July 6 -- The legislation that mistakenly resurrected a Virginia law granting workers Sundays off was reviewed by the legislature's legal department, two Cabinet secretaries, three lawyers in the attorney general's office and several of Gov. Mark R. Warner's top advisers, according to documents provided by Warner's office. None of them caught the mistake.

Instead, it was a young labor lawyer at a private firm who months later noticed that millions of Virginia employees had suddenly been granted new rights to demand time off on weekends. The law requires employers to grant non-managerial workers a weekend day off or pay fines and triple the worker's pay rate. The General Assembly resurrected the law from decades of obscurity during the 2004 session by accidentally removing exemptions for most of the state's businesses while trying to eliminate four out-of-date provisions of the blue laws, which forbid businesses to be open on Sundays. * * *

The trouble started when the Division of Legislative Services, which acts as the legislature's legal office, drafted Senate Bill 659 for Sen. Frederick M. Quayle (R-Chesapeake). It read simply: "Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia: That §§ 18.2-341, 18.2-342, 18.2-343, and 40.1-28.5 of the Code of Virginia are repealed."

According to the governor's tracking folder, the legislative services lawyers indicated no concerns about the bill on March 3, 2004, after it had passed both chambers -- 40 to 0 in the Senate and 88 to 9 in the House.

The bill was sent to the Department of Planning and Budget, which indicated that it would have no impact on the state budget. That memo was signed by Secretary of Finance John M. Bennett on April 1.

The next day, it was forwarded to the attorney general's office, along with a form titled "Recommendations to the Governor." There, lawyers checked three boxes indicating "No conflict with existing law," "No Virginia constitutional conflict" and "No federal constitutional conflict." They made no suggested amendments or comments. It was signed by Carla Collins, an assistant attorney general; Frank S. Ferguson, a special counsel in the attorney general's office; and Christopher R. Nolan, chief counsel to Kilgore.

Attorney Steve Minor's SW Virginia law blog has been following this story since it surfaced the end of June.
This entry contains links to the laws involved and a link to this Roanoke Times story. A quote from the story:
[Sen. Fred Quayle, R-Chesapeake] said Tuesday that all he'd intended to do was clean up Virginia statutes by removing now unconstitutional provisions of Sunday "blue laws." Quayle said no one, including staff at Legislative Services who helped draft the bill, alerted him or seemed to notice that his bill also would remove day-of-rest exemptions for most private businesses - including manufacturers, medical services, restaurants, movie theaters, publishing operations like The Roanoke Times, and a host of other enterprises.

Those exemptions will go up in smoke come Thursday [July 1] and Quayle and others are beginning to feel the heat. The senator was asked whether he'd fielded calls from businesspeople. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I will do absolutely anything I can to correct it when the Legislature reconvenes in January."

See also this entry on an injunction issued to suspend the blue law operation.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 7, 2004 08:39 AM
Posted to General Law Related