Lens on the Legislature: The Process Following Engrossment

The House has now engrossed over a hundred bills and the Senate has engrossed over sixty. This week's focus is on the remaining legislative process for those bills.

When a bill is engrossed by the originating chamber, it is sent to the second chamber. In the simplest case, the second chamber agrees with the bill and votes to enroll it. [Enrollment was discussed in last week's column.] Enrolled bills are signed by both presiding officers and sent to the governor.

Things are seldom that simple, however. If the second chamber either doesn't take action on the bill or votes disapproval (either of which could occur at the committee level or in the full chamber), the bill dies. If the second house votes to amend the bill, the amended version must go back to the originating house for further consideration. If the originating house then fails to take up the amended bill or votes it down, the bill dies. More typically, the originating house will either vote to accept the amendments or vote to request the appointment of a conference committee.

A conference committee is comprised of five Senators and five Representatives appointed by their chambers' presiding officers. The committee's charge is limited to reconciling differences between the two versions of the bill. Unless authorized by their respective chambers to go "outside the bounds" in specifically enumerated ways, the committee may not alter text that is not in disagreement nor may they add text related to any matter that is not included in either original version.

At least three conferees from each chamber must approve the proposed compromise bill. The committee prepares a report that includes the compromise language, markups comparing it to the two original bills, and the signatures of the approving conferees. Each chamber then takes a yes or no vote on the compromise language, with no amendments permitted.

If the conference committee report is accepted by both chambers, the bill is enrolled. If the report is not acceptable to either chamber, it may be returned to the same conference committee for further deliberation or a new conference committee may be requested. The bill dies if the conference committee can't reach an agreement that is acceptable to both chambers.

All of this process takes time and creates risk. A former parliamentarian who served in both chambers reportedly said there are 27 places in the legislative process where a bill can be killed.

Two key procedural methods used to increase the likelihood of an acceptable bill becoming enrolled are:

• Lining up a key sponsor. A sponsor is a member of the opposite chamber who guides the bill through the legislative process in that chamber. A sponsor who serves on the committee of jurisdiction in the second chamber, for example, can be a great help.
• Filing a companion bill. If identical bills are filed in both chambers, when the first bill to be engrossed is sent to the second chamber, there's a good chance the appropriate committee will have already held hearings on its companion bill. In such cases, it can somewhat summarily propose its version as amendments to the engrossed bill, cutting out a lot of time and additional process. There are also other procedures that can be employed on the floor of the full chamber, such as bringing up a companion in lieu of a bill that is already scheduled thereby allowing the companion to move ahead of its normal place on the calendar.

A future column will focus on the process subsequent to enrollment.