The Governmental Operations committee (Simcha Felder, chair) will hold two hearings on the various term limits bills. The first will be on Thursday, October 16, starting at 3:00 and continuing into the evening. The second will be the next morning, October 17, starting at 10:00. Locations are still undetermined.

Speakers will be allowed two minutes. My guess is that the chairman will enforce that limit pretty strictly, as there will be a lot of speakers. In addition, the committee counsel told me that Chairman Felder will suspend his standard "15-minute rule" for the Oct. 16 hearing. Under that rule, people had to show up and sign up within 15 minutes of the start of the hearing, but in this case many people won't be able to arrive by 3:15 so he's suspending the rule.

There's more...

Anyone wishing to speak should write their speech in advance. Practice saying it aloud and time it -- you don't want to go over 1:45 in practice. Bring in 20 copies of your speech to hand in at the hearing.

I am organizing a group to speak on the 16th, possibly two groups, one for people who can arrive at 3:00 and one for people who can't come until later (probably 6:00-6:30). The idea is that each person can take an aspect of this issue, so that the various 2-minute speeches add up to a large group message. If you want to join this group, e-mail me at dan-at-danjacoby.com.