SB 2016-004: Senate Rules and Procedures

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

- Should a bill be allowed to have multiple sponsors in the same house?  If we adopt the old Amendment rules, how should this affect the amendment process?

Theoretically speaking, you would need to have a primary or main sponsor would make decisions regarding the amendments, with all co-sponsors just being a formality. Otherwise it would get chaotic.

Tmth is right though, plus at points the number of bills might dip for a variety of reasons and thus refusing bills from another house on grounds of lack of sponsorship in the other one, would be counterproductive.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

- Should a bill be allowed to have multiple sponsors in the same house?  If we adopt the old Amendment rules, how should this affect the amendment process?

Theoretically speaking, you would need to have a primary or main sponsor would make decisions regarding the amendments, with all co-sponsors just being a formality. Otherwise it would get chaotic.

Tmth is right though, plus at points the number of bills might dip for a variety of reasons and thus refusing bills from another house on grounds of lack of sponsorship in the other one, would be counterproductive.

My main concern is that there seems to be little to facilitate direct coordination between members of both houses, besides select committees which have no legislative power.  Ideally, we would have conference committees to resolve differences between House and Senate versions of similar legislation, with the sponsors of each version of the bill overseeing the process.  Alas, I suppose that isn't quite tenable in a game of this nature.

It is very hard to get people to interact, but lack of such has been probably biggest flaw in this game. We have these institutions and natural inclination is for them to do their own thing as opposed to collaborating as a part of a system. I do think it is somewhat better than before, though perhaps that is mistaken view of the situation.