The Legislative Process
Both the Assembly and the Senate operate an independent, but parallel process to move bills forward. Each House introduces its own bills, routes bills through their Houses' committees, holds public hearings, and schedules floor votes. In order for any bill to become a law, the bill must move through all the steps in both houses, and both houses must agree (concur) on the language of the bill.
The same bill language may be introduced concurrently in both the Assembly (by a Representative) and the Senate (by a Senator). In this case it is the same bill, but has two different bill numbers (an Assembly Bill number and a Senate Bill number). When the bill language/co-sponsors are identical in both houses, these are called companion bills.
How is a bill introduced?
All laws begin as ideas. The legislative process can be thought of as a set of rules where lots of ideas can be considered, debated, and tested before becoming embedded into our laws, or discarded altogether.
Only legislators can introduce bills. Citizens can't write bills themselves, but they can contact their legislators with concerns and ideas about ways to improve Wisconsin law.
Sometime legislators respond to constituent concerns (or larger problems that are affecting many of their constituents) by introducing a bill they feel will help address the problem. Similarly, large member groups (like WAL) can represent their members interests and suggest ways that the law can be revised to address member concerns.
Bills are drafted, at Legislator's request, but the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB). The LRB determines which areas of the statutes need to be revised to achieve the desired changes.
The resulting draft bill is then circulated through the House (Senate or Assembly) for co-sponsorship. Signing on as a co-sponsor is generally an indication that the legislator supports the bill. There is generally a limited period of time for legislators to sign on as co-sponsors.
The role of legislative committees
Legislative committees are designed to focus on narrower topic areas. The Legislators who serve on a committee become the “experts” for the entire Assembly or Senate on the bills/topic covered within their committee. Currently, the Senate has 19 committees and the Assembly has 37. The legislature may create or consolidate committees. The Legislature also has 10 Joint committees, which include members from both houses.
Legislative committees can cover a tremendous amount of ground. For example the Natural Resources committees consider all sorts of bills related to the environment—hunting and trapping issues, air quality, solid waste, global warming, water use (shorelands, wetlands, rivers, lakes), permitting etc.
Committees are where a large bulk of the legislature’s work gets done. Here a smaller subset of bills are examined by a subset of legislators. Every bill that is introduced is referred to a committee for their consideration as part of the legislative process.
Committees actually have quite a bit of power. The Committee Chair decides which bills will have a public hearing scheduled before the committee and which won’t. Public hearings give groups and citizens the opportunity to testify about a bill, and they give legislators the opportunity to hear why a policy approach may or may not be a good idea. The Committee can also amend a bill. Not every bill gets a public hearing; the Committee decides which of the many bills referred it will consider in greater detail. A public hearing must be held before a bill can move on to the next step on the path to becoming a law.
After a public hearing, the Committee can discuss the bill further, and any amendments they make want to make to the bill. The Committee Chair must then schedule an Executive Session on the bill in Committee. In the Executive Session, Committee members vote on any amendments to the bill, and whether or not to send the bill forward to the full Senate or Assembly for consideration. In order for a bill to pass out of committee, the majority of committee members must vote to send the bill forward.
In the Senate committee there are five members; the Assembly 14. The make-up of the Committee (ratio of Democrats to Republicans and vice versa) is determined by which party is in the majority. If there are more elected Democrats in the Senate, there will be more Democrats on the committee than Republicans (3 out of 5 would be Democrats). The majority party also appoints a Senator/Representative from their party to serve as Committee Chair.
What happens after the initial committee?
Once a bill is voted out of its initial committee, it is referred to the Organization or Rules committee which schedules bills to be voted on by the full Senate or Assembly. These committees serve to keep order in the Legislative body, so that Legislators know which bills will be coming to the full floor for a vote and they can make themselves familiar with the bills.
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This committee must vote to send the bill forward to the full House (Senate or Assembly). The Organization or Rules committee does not schedule every bill that is referred to it by the other committees for a floor vote before the entire legislative body. If this committee does not schedule a vote, the bill dies.
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When a bill is scheduled for a vote by a legislative body, the Senate/Assembly can debate the bill, propose amendments to the bill on the floor, table the bill or refer the bill to another committee, or vote it up or down.
Bills that pass the full body are then referred to the other House (Assembly or Senate). The bill then goes through the same procedure in the other house. If amendments are made to the Bill in the Assembly, the Senate must concur with the Assembly’s amendments.
If a bill gets through the legislature, the Governor still has the option of vetoing the bill. If the Governor signs the bill, then the bill becomes law.
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While there is one way for a bill to become law, there are many ways for bills to "die."
- If the initial committee does nothing, the bill dies
- If the initial committee does not hold an executive session on the bill, the bill dies.
- If the Org/Rules committee does schedule the bill to go to the floor, the bill dies
- If the full Assembly or Senate votes against the bill, the bill dies
- If the other house fails to move a bill through any points in the process, the bill dies.
- If the Governor vetoes the bill, and/or the legislature does not have the votes to override the veto, the bill dies
Flowcharting the Legislative process
While citizens may want to see their ideas implemented immediately, there are some real benefits to a system where changes are generally gradual and/or difficult to make. Can you imagine what it would be like if the same laws changed significantly with every two year legislative session? State agencies wouldn’t be able to figure out how to implement the legislature’s wishes before the law changed again. How would citizens keep track?
There are bad bills that get passed and good bills that don’t pass. But the process allows legislators togo back the next session or in several sessions to fix mistakes.