Samijeans is a fellow WS'er and also a person who took the time to go out and search for Caylee right along side me. Her intent here is in good faith and I think your calling her out on grammar is very impolite.
Since you seem to have knowledge on how to go about getting such things in motion, would it not be better to give us some guidelines as to how to get something like this in done?
Sorry, I wasn't being impolite. I was pointing out it was unlikely this person was a legislator because of their spelling, not their grammar. I don't consider someone's spelling skills to be an indicator of how valuable they are as a person, only that there are some jobs they're unlikely to hold. Oh, and by the way, unless Samijeans is linking to her own post at the monkeys site, I wasn't referring to her.
I'll be glad to help you figure out the process. For starters, find something that isn't going to cost a lot of money for what would likely be very little benefit or that would essentially be an unfunded mandate on local governments. I'm not saying necessarily scrap this idea altogether but try to find a way to make it work at little or no cost. I'm making a big point of this because legislators usually aren't interested in sponsoring bills that won't pass. The more likely you can make it to pass, the easier it will be to find a sponsor and other legislators to support it.
Then figure out where you want to get legislation passed. I would say chances of federal legislation are lower than slim to none.
From there, figure out who you want to contact about sponsoring the bill. Look for someone whose committee assignments would give them an interest in that area. Being on the committee that would consider the bill before it goes to the floor would also give it a better chance of making it out of committee.
Get all of your ducks in a row - make sure you have a good outline of what the legislation would do and have contacted any interest groups that would be willing to lobby for it and gotten a solid commitment from them to do just that. Contact anyone who could testify for the bill in committee with compelling testimony and get a commitment from them as well.
You're also going to have to contact any local and state government agencies that would be impacted by the bill. If they don't support it, it's dead in the water. At the local level, I don't mean, for example, contacting each sheriff's and police department. There are statewide and national organizations for most of these entities.
Then contact the legislator's legislative aide or, if they have more than one aide, the one who handles work in the relevant committee. I think it's always better to work through the aide who will be doing most of the work on a bill rather than contacting the legislator first. They may well have good suggestions for improving the bill.
That should get you started.
