Three weeks in, SGA has no new bills

While it has been three weeks since the SGA went back in session, more than 30 legislators — half of whom are new to the body — have yet to propose a single piece of new legislation this year.

In an email to Student Government Association legislators Tuesday night, Speaker of the Legislature Carson McDonald expressed frustration to representatives that no new bills had been proposed for the second week in a row. Since the start of the year, the body had only quickly passed two older pieces of legislation: one to fund the SGA committees and another regarding the DOTS program that offers free daytime bus passes to College Park residents.

"Each and every one of them ran on a platform of change and doing something new, but doing something new doesn't mean not doing anything at all," McDonald said in an interview before Wednesday's meeting.

SGA President Kaiyi Xie made a point of urging the body to start proposing legislation during his executive report at the start of this week's session.

"You were all elected to do something," Xie told legislators. "I know this school isn't perfect, nothing is perfect, so we can all come together and identify a lot of these issues."

McDonald said the lack of new proposals probably stems from the fact that so many representatives are new, given that the legislature is a nearly even split between veterans and fresh faces.

Many of them, he noted, would be writing legislation for the very first time, while most of the legislators who had written a number of bills last year either graduated or now serve as executives or cabinet members.

"Nobody wants to be the first controversial bill, so they're testing the waters right now," McDonald said. "But I think once one person dives in, everyone else will follow."

But outlying commuter legislator Matt Jackson, who is new to the SGA this year, said it is not just that some of the new faces are hesitant; some may not even know how to get started.

"Honestly, I'm not entirely sure how to go about it," Jackson said. "It seems like a daunting task just to write up our service initiatives … I think it's a process we need to be eased into."

While McDonald encouraged legislators in his emails to come to him and other leaders if they need help writing a bill, Jackson said the main issue is a lack of initiative among the legislators themselves to come together and start drafting. Part of the problem, Jackson said, is most of the legislators do not know each other well enough. As the annual retreat was blown out by Hurricane Irene at the start of the year, the legislators had very little opportunity to simply bond.

"Not enough people in SGA have gotten together," he said. "It is getting ridiculous and we need to get things done. But after the whole easing back thing, I think it will turn around very soon."

Outlying commuter legislator Brendan Cusack, a veteran SGA member, said new bills are already in the works. He said he's heard of several legislators already starting to work together and ideas being floated around within the body.

McDonald, however, said more should have been done already.

"At the rate we are going, we will be less productive than the United States Congress," he wrote.

villanueva at umdbk dot com