Bill for the bills

Northwest Herald senior reporter Kevin Craver has a great idea. Charge the legislators to file bills. Read the article on his blog at http://www.nwherald.com/blogs/opening-doors/ or just click here. So far, in this session 9,755 bills have been filed. Unbelieveable!!!


Kevin wrote, "That's 3,827 in the Senate and 5,928 in the House as of noon today (February 21, 2012) (look here). And boys and girls, we still have 10 months to go in the two-year session of the 97th General Assembly."

Other ideas from Kevin?

Call the filing fee the Nanny State Implementation Act;
Give each legislator three free bills a year, but require them to pay $500 to file each additional bill.
Double the filing fee to $1,000 for any bill imposing an unfunded mandate on a local government.
Boost the fee to $2,000 for any bill increasing state spending without an offset.

What would I add to it? After the three free bills, how $500 each for the next five?
Then $1,000 each for the next five?
And $2,000 each for the next five?
And then $5,000 each for next ten?
And then more after that.

This might slow the insane number of bills filed by Illinois legislators.

Good idea, Kevin!