I know it's been awhile since I posted. I was on vacation all of last week and have been extremely busy at work so far this week. I got a newsletter from the Missouri House of Representatives in the mail today, though, so I thought I'd share some of the bills and resolutions that have passed this year:

House Bill 33 designates the North American Bullfrog as the official state amphibian, so you can all sleep soundly knowing that Missouri finally has a state amphibian...or maybe you can't sleep with all of that croaking...

House Bill 64 authorizes an annual state sales tax holiday in August. We used to have this in Florida until The Other Other Bush took it away.

House Bill 219 requires the secretary of state to name a reading room in one of the buildings comprising the Missouri State Archives as the "Alex M. Petrovic Reading Room". Here's hoping it's a broom closet, bathroom, or shed.

Senate Bill 38 adds highway designations within Newton and Jasper County. Apparently neither of these counties were previously big enough to warrant highway signs?

Senate Bill 355 creates the Missouri Wine and Grape Board. It's good to know that our state government is so bored that it has time to create unnecessary boards. Perhaps a "Road and Highway Pothole Board" would be more prudent?

But most of the bills don't have any sort of useful description. They carefully denote all of the highways and reading rooms named after people, but give us shady descriptions for important things like "Authorizes various local taxes". What kind of taxes? Or "Modifies various sections pertaining to hazardous waste". Am I going to wake up tomorrow and find syringes outside my doorstep? This, to me, is more important than who they're naming a mile of State Road WW in Podunk County after.

From what I can tell, our state legislature sits around and chitchats about who to name pieces of our highways after and has pointless arguments about altering the "definition of 'teacher' in the teacher tenure act". Have any of then driven in this state recently? Instead of naming the highways after people, why don't they repair the highways?

Posted by: Nathan at July 24, 2005 6:34 PM