As budget discussions continue at the State Capitol in Des Moines, some legislators have been working on quality control of budget bills.

House District 47 Representative Chip Baltimore says he’s been working on standings.  He describes standings as reviewing bills for additional policies that were attached from previous bills that didn’t make it through the legislative process.

“I’ve been trying to go over all of these budget bills making sure that the policies in them are prudent and wise and trying to weed out the ones that we think should either go through the normal legislative process or just not enact it at all.”

Baltimore points out that several bills end up looking like Christmas trees with everyone adding their own policies on budget bills to get them passed through at the end of the session.

He believes that by doing this kind of practice, it is a dangerous way to get something passed through that isn’t good public policy.