First of all, getting 280,000 valild signatures on a complicated issue like this won’t be easy.

A group of Illinoisans says it’s time to end the Legislature’s practice of last-minute deals and votes on the state budget and other important issues.

The Illinois Democracy Project has formed to amend the state Constitution in the November 2008 election. The amendment would require legislation to have a 21-day review period before lawmakers could approve it. Legislation deemed an emergency by top leaders and a special panel could still be approved quickly under the proposed amendment.

This “group” (with a small handful of members and no discernable or disclosed funding source) also assumes that just because there’s a delay that anyone will actually read the legislation. There are thousands of bills each year, and most legislators just don’t read them. Giving them more time probably won’t change things. Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer that they all read the legislation as well. But whether this idea will make it so is another question entirely.

More likely, the people who will benefit most from the constitutionally stalled bills will be bigtime lobbyists, who spend most of their time slowing down or stopping legislation rather than passing them. They do this by nitpicking the bills to death. Lots more time gives them lots more nits to pick. While this may look good on its face, I wonder if it has more to do with another agenda.

Here’s the actual text of the proposed Constitutional Amendment.

(a) Public Review Period: Except bills passed as emergency legislation, the final vote required for any bill to meet the procedural requirements for passage shall not be taken before a public review period of twenty-one calendar days has elapsed since the latter of the date on which the bill was filed or, if the bill has been amended, the date on which the bill was last amended.
(b) Joint Committee on Emergency Legislation: Prior to the election of the presiding officers of either house in odd-numbered years, the Secretary of State shall publicly draw by random selection the names of forty members of the House of Representatives, and the Governor shall publicly draw by random selection the names of twenty members of the Senate, and the members of the General Assembly whose names are drawn shall comprise the Joint Committee on Emergency Legislation. The member with most time served in the General Assembly shall be the chairperson, with ties in service resolved by lot. Any vacancy shall be filled within thirty days by a public random selection of the name of a member of the same house and by the same state authority that selected the member whose departure created the vacancy.
(c) Emergency Legislation: If a bill is declared by the presiding officers of both houses to be emergency legislation, and if the bill describes a state of emergency and explains why a delay would exacerbate or render the bill ineffectual as a response to the emergency, and if at least three-fifths of the members of the Joint Committee on Emergency Legislation cast record votes in favor of a resolution recommending passage of the bill, then the bill may be considered concurrently and immediately in both houses and, if at least three-fifths of the members in each house cast record votes in favor of the bill, the bill shall be declared passed and, notwithstanding the provisions of Section 10 of this Article, shall take effect immediately upon being signed into law by the Governor.

Again, the goal isn’t bad at all. It may have stopped some pretty lousy bills from being passed (the SBC debacle comes to mind).

But if legislators won’t stand up for their rights now, why would this make any difference?

*** UPDATE *** YDD makes an interesting, if a bit harsh, point in comments.

The… moron who drafted this has obviously no legislative experience. Flip it around the other way: no amendments to any bill within 21 days of final passage. I can’t think of any bill of substance that passed without some amendments to atleast fine tune it in the last three days. Once amended, most of those bills pass with landslide majorities.