Resigned lawmakers’ bills to stay alive

The political careers of Kelvin Atkinson and Mike Sprinkle are dead but the bills they had legally drafted this session aren’t.

Today is the deadline for introduction of measures by individual lawmakers and obviously, those two now-former Democratic members can’t very well introduce any of their bills.

So Democratic leadership approved Senate Concurrent Resolution 4 as an emergency measure declaring that bills requested by Atkinson, the former Senate majority leader, and Sprinkle, the former head of the Assembly Health and Human Services committee, will now be “re-allocated” to other members or standing committees of those two bodies so they can be processed.

SCR4 also exempts their bills from being counted against the maximum number of legislative measures allowed individual legislators by the joint standing rules.

The measure gives their new sponsors until March 29 to introduce those measures.

It was approved unanimously by the Senate. It was expected to be approved by the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Assembly after Sen. Jacky Rosen’s speech.

Atkinson resigned after being charged with federal wire fraud for converting $250,000 in campaign contributions to personal use. Sprinkle resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct.