Desperation Legislation

From the "Desperation Legislation" files:

Ever wonder how long it's been since that bedspread and blanket in your hotel room was washed? [ed. note: No.]

Sate [sic] Rep. Kevin Joyce wants to help you sleep a little easier.

The Chicago Democrat is proposing legislation that would require Illinois hotels, motels and other places of public lodging to post in each guest room the last time blankets, sheets and other bed linens were changed.

Joyce wants to require Motel/Hotel owners to post a schedule on the inside of the door which states when the bedding was last washed.

As sources in the article point out, this is a totally needless requirement. But as we know, some politicians are genetically incapable of restraining their urge to get their name on a bill, no matter how goofy. It's more important to them to get some publicity than for the bill to actually be, say, rational or actually needed.

No one's ever gotten ill from hotel or motel sheets (or at least reported it) and there is no way to prevent unscrupulous motel owners from simply falsifying the "sheet sheet", so to speak.

So just to satisfy this guy's need for publicity, his measure would subject all hotel/motel owners to another unecessary hassle and expense while providing no real benefit to anyone.

If the motel owner were honest with his laundry records, they'd probably have to change bedding needlessly in rooms where there hadn't been any guests for a while in order to prevent paranoid travellers from requesting new bedding if the chart reported that the bedding hadn't been cleaned for say, a week. And of course, the measure would no doubt prompt the majority of owners to simply list the bedding as recently washed even if it wasn't. After all, if not for this silly measure, no one would be able to tell anyway.

The only comfort in these types of stories is that the measures usually don't pass.