NJ’s Handy Legislative Lookup Thingy

Filed in National by on April 11, 2009

Going by this NJ database, Gerald Brady and Nick Manolakos are the most effective house members. It is kind of a stupid stat, but the aggregation of this info into this useable tool is a genuine public service.

(Click here to see what I’m talking about)

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Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (3)

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  1. Unstable Isotope says:
    April 11, 2009 at 8:10 am

    Thanks for the link! It will come in handy to examine legislator’s records. My rep, Oberle, seems really concerned with estuary water intake systems. I’d better find out what that is all about.

  2. cassandra_m says:
    April 11, 2009 at 10:13 am

    This would be alot more meaningful if you knew something about the bills that were being introduced and passed. It is OK to get alot of bills and resolutions passed, but if they are all for silly reasons, then you have a quality issue.

    It’s cool, though — but I wonder if legislators will start working bills to get their stats up?

  3. John Tobin says:
    April 11, 2009 at 6:28 pm

    It does not seem to be so handy a tool for judging the impact of indvidual legislators.
    (1) It treats all legislation as equal. The fact that people here know HB 117 and HB 100 and HB 5 shows that the importance of bills is not equal. There are legislators who have successfully enacted legislation enabling specific groups to have vanity license plates. By numbers alone that person would be considered effective, but would have exerted little influence on public policy.
    (2) It does not take into account leadership roles. Rep Dennis Williams and Sen Nancy Cook may exert much more of an impact on public policy as the chairs of the Joint Finance Committee which writes the State budget than others exert enacting several pieces of legislation. Same with the Bond Bill Committee which deals with capital improvements and infrastructure. Being part of a bigger process, like writing the budget, may be more impactful than a series of smaller pieces of legislation.

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