Legislation that starts as plain language, should stay as plain language

January 7, 2010
by Irene Etzkorn

While I applaud Ezra Klein's notion (Making transparency into a reality, Ezra Klein's Washington Post blog, January 7, 2009 at 12:15 p.m.) of disseminating the plain English documents that are created as the underpinning of Senate legislation, rather than the Bills themselves, why doesn't anyone ask why the final Bill must be unintelligible? Why are we going through a two-step process to complicate and mystify if we have a source document which is straightforward and intelligible? Perhaps it makes more sense to rethink the structural outline of Senate legislation.

Irene Etzkorn is the executive director, simplification for the Siegel+Gale New York office.

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