The Virginia General Assembly will pass hundreds of bills this year, but one that’s being hailed as the ‘bill of the year’ by some advocates will likely fly under your radar.
Writing bills to be correctly interpreted by judges or others in the future isn’t easy, and the use of one word in bill writing is finally getting the attention many say is long overdue.
“Not many bills have their own banners, and so this banner was hanging on the secretary’s desk,” said Virginia Coalition for Open Government president Megan Rhyne describing why she was attracted to the banner -and the bill- in question. HB1299 defines the word “shall” in state code to mean something is mandatory, not just “directory,” or a suggestion.
Bill patron and Fairfax Democratic Delegate Karrie Delaney said the bill was needed in the wake of state court rulings that downgraded “shall” to not being required, and, after being in the chamber for almost a decade, she was sick of it.
“The potential of noncompliance with the law and then the argument against that is ‘Shall doesn’t mean shall,’ we decided to put this bill in and see what happens,” Delaney told Radio IQ.
The bill received unanimous support in the House, a welcome vote if the lobbyists who overheard my conversation with Delaney, their eyes wide in awe at the possible future clarity, were to be believed.
As for how every day Virginian might feel the impact of “shall means shall,” Ryan O’Toole with Freedom Virginia said they may not notice much, but...
"I think what will matter is when people in this building are crafting legislation, they will have a renewed guarantee that requiring something will have the intended effect," he told Radio IQ.
Rhyne, meanwhile, hopes it will help courts and government officials understand Freedom of Information Act requirements; the word “shall” is used in Virginia’s FOIA law nine times.
“The provisions of this chapter should be liberally construed," Rhyne raid from the state law. "The FOIA officers who use it, they need certainty and they need to know that if we’re using the word ‘shall’ we really do mean it.’”
It’s now awaiting a vote in a Senate subcommittee.
