Keeping Abreast of Boating Legislation Developments

When the new NYS lifejacket law was announced, I found out about it when the press release I then posted here was posted on NYCKayaker, the local email list run by the Hudson River Watertrail Association.

It was a very good thing to know, but at least one person asked why it that the first most of us heard about it was after it was signed into law, rather than earlier in the legislative process, when people would have time to weigh in if they had opinions?

Personally, I think that law is probably one of the more sensible things to come out of Albany this year, and if I'd had the opportunity to comment on it, my comment would have been "Good idea".

Still I did think that "we should have known about this before it was a done deal" was a very good point. NYC kayakers (and rowers and canoeists) are an opinionated bunch, we like to have our say, and I'm no exception. This one, I wouldn't have asked to change a word, but the (currently hypothetical) next one might not make so much sense.

However, because I've been a bit swamped at work, and because in this case I actually liked the law, followup slipped my mind until earlier this week, when one of my more activist friends asked me if anybody had figured out how we could make sure of being notified. When I got that reminder, I decided to come home & see what "Mr. Google" could tell me.

Google didn't quite answer the question of how a person could receive notice of pending boating legislation, but within about 5 minutes I was looking at the US Power Squadron's site, which has section called "Must Know Legislative News", where they post information about pending legislation.

Best find was their mid-year report, done in June, which listed nice clear synopses of all such legislation by state in alphabetical order & included contacts. 2nd one down here, "Midyear RBSC Report"

http://www.usps.org/national/govprcom/Hot_leg_news_f.htm

Seems like that might be a good site for people who're interested in what's in the boating-safety pipeline to find information without having to wade through a ton of other stuff.