Give us the Splendid Sun
Mar 10th, 2008 by JamieB
Just a coincidence, no doubt, but PennFuture, the environmental advocacy organization, last week issued a press release headlined “Give us the Splendid Sun,” which called for the passage of SHB 1 . . . .No, not Senate Bill 1, the open records bill that Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware) ushered through the legislative process throughout most of last year until it finally reached the governor’s desk for signature in February. No, this is Special Senate House Bill 1, which turns out to be, not about open records or open meetings, but renewable energy.
I would tell you more about this bill, and some day I might. But, ironically, just days after I published some opinions from others about how the Pennsylvania legislature needs to step into the “modern” world of the Internet – both to make records more accessible to the public and to avoid creating another cumbersome bureaucracy – the legislature’s website has been down for the last two days.
Anyway, PennFuture’s press release leads off with a line from the poet Walt Whitman, “Give me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling!”
“Here in Pennsylvania, that splendid silent sun is about to be harnessed to create new clean energy, yielding a bounty of new, permanent, great green jobs, clean air, and pollution-free power. Making sure the sun’s dazzling beams are put to work now in Pennsylvania, by ensuring early investments in solar with the passage of Special Senate House Bill 1 (SHB 1), is job one.”
Whitman’s sun can do double duty in Pennsylvania — by shining into places we have not been able to see for a long time — as we look forward to a more transparent and accountable state government, thanks in good part to the unanimous passage of the other Senate Bill 1.