Past biennia: , , House Floor Activity Report Retrieve the House Calendar and link to bill text, amendments, bill histories, and roll call votes. Senate Floor Activity Report Retrieve the Senate Calendar and link to bill text, amendments, bill histories, and roll call votes.
Bill Tracking Create personalized lists of bills you wish to track through the legislative process. Legislative Digests Retrieve summaries of the bills introduced and amended on the selected day. House Floor Calendar. Initiatives and Referenda Link to the text of initiatives and referenda. How a Bill Becomes a Law Learn how a bill moves through the legislative process. Detailed Legislative Reports Historical information back to Text of a Legislative Document.
Bills by Sponsor. Roll Calls on a Bill. Bills By Citation. Companion Bill Report. Selected Step Reports.
Legislative Action Reports. Which bills a member selects could be the result of a party caucus, or another member approaching that member, or a piece of legislation about which the member feels strongly. Rules Committee members review the bills and decide whether or not to move them on to the next step. Sometimes bills skip this step and go to the calendar for second reading. It is another step that allows leadership to control the process. Those bills that will probably require some debate are placed on the regular calendar.
Those that are probably not controversial may be placed on the suspension calendar in the House, the consent calendar in the Senate. Each house prepares documents that list the bills scheduled to be heard on the floor. The House prepares "bill report books" containing an order of contents and the bill report of each bill on the calendar and "floor calendars" a list of the bills, a brief description for each, and the committee action on each.
The Senate prepares "calendars" with an order of contents and the bill report of each bill , and "flash calendars" the list with the brief descriptions and committee actions. The Senate flash calendar lists only those bills that were "pulled" from Rules at the last Rules Committee meeting. Second Reading: It is on second reading that the chamber discusses the merits of the legislation.
It is here, too, where members can offer amendments to the bill. Most bills that get this far get their second reading in the couple of weeks following the committee cut-off. If a bill has been amended in committee or on the floor in the first house, it is ordered engrossed. Engrossing a bill means incorporating the amendments into the body of the bill so that the second house gets one document.
If a bill has been amended in the second house, it is returned to the first house with the amendments attached so that the first house can decide whether or not it wishes to agree with the changes the second house made. Third Reading: Third reading is where the roll call vote on final passage is taken.
If the bill finally passes, it continues in the process. If the bill fails on final passage, it goes no further. Under certain circumstances, the chamber may decide to reconsider the vote that was taken; in that case, the chamber has twenty-four hours to make a motion to reconsider the bill. If the bill passes third reading in the second house and the second house did not amend the bill, the bill has passed the Legislature.
At the start of the session, both houses agree on "cut-off" dates by which bills have to be finally passed out of the first house and finally passed out of the second house. Concurrence, Dispute, and Conference Committees: If the bill has been amended by the second house, the first house has to decide whether it will concur in the amendments or not. Leadership decides which bills returned from the second house will be discussed and places those bills on the concurrence calendar House or concurring calendar Senate.
If the first house concurs in the amendments, the bill has passed the Legislature. If the first house disagrees with the second house, it can ask the second house to recede from the amendments. If the second house recedes, the bill has passed the Legislature. If the two houses cannot resolve their differences, one of them can ask for a conference committee. Members from each house meet to discuss the differences.
If they agree on what is to be done, the conference committee makes a report. Both houses must adopt the conference committee report for the bill to pass the Legislature. If one house does not adopt the conference committee report whether by vote or inaction , the bill has not passed. Enrolling: Once a bill has finally passed the Legislature, it is enrolled. A certificate proclaiming that it has passed is attached and, if necessary, the amendments from the second house or conference committee are incorporated into the body of the bill.
The bill is signed by the Speaker of the House, the Chief Clerk of the House, the President of the Senate, and the Secretary of the Senate and is sent to the Governor for his or her action. Governor's actions: The Governor reviews the bill. The Governor may decide to sign it, veto part of it, or veto all of it. If the Governor vetoes part or all of it, the Legislature may vote to override the veto.
That happens rarely. If the governor does not act on a bill after the allotted number of days, it is as if it was signed. From the Governor's desk, bills go to the Secretary of State who assigns a session law chapter number.
Carryover: The Legislature works within the framework of a two-year cycle. For instance, the Session is the 59th Session of the Legislature. There will be a least two regular sessions, a "long" session in days and a "short" session in 60 days. There could also be any number of special sessions, none of which can last longer than 30 days.
Therefore, just because a bill did not make it all the way through during the regular session in the odd-numbered year for example, does not mean it is "dead. At the start of the next session, be it a special session or the next regular session, bills from the previous session are reintroduced and retained in their present position.
The Legislature has a lot of latitude with these bills. The first house can place the bill on the calendar for third reading and send it right back to the second house, or it can make the bill go to committee and through the whole process again. This is in addition to the new bills introduced during the current session.
This procedure can make it difficult to keep track of bills during a special session or the second regular session. If a bill does not make it through the process by the end of the two-year cycle, it is "dead. Turn on more accessible mode.
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