Wyoming LAP Book - Background

How A Bill Becomes Law

      Bills (proposed laws) are drafted at the request of legislators by Wyoming's Legislative Service Office, the nonpartisan agency that staffs the Legislature. Unlike most other states, which have longer legislative sessions, Wyoming's legislators do not have personal staffs or offices.
      Once a bill is drafted and approved by the sponsoring legislator(s), it is placed in a special folder called the bill jacket that will hold the bill and all the paperwork documenting its journey through the legislative process. No action on the bill can be taken without the official jacketed version, and during rowdy legislative debates in the not-so-distant past, legislators were known to take off with the bill jacket and thereby halt any further consideration.
      The Wyoming Constitution requires that all revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Otherwise, a bill may be introduced in either the House or the Senate, depending on the bill sponsor or strategy considerations. Sometimes identical bills are introduced in both houses in hopes that at least one stays alive.
      Any type of bill may be introduced during the Wyoming Legislature's general sessions, held for 40 days every odd-numbered year. Introduction of a non-budget bill during the 20-day budget sessions, held every even-numbered year, requires a two-thirds vote of approval in the house of introduction.

Committee Action
      It is the responsibility of the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate to assign a bill to a committee. This is usually a straightforward process, but sometimes bills do not fall into an obvious category, or are assigned to a different committee than one would expect for strategic reasons or because of unequal workloads.
      The committee chair has complete discretion over action on bills in his/her committee. The chair is not required to hear bills in the order assigned, or even to hear them at all.
      Notices of committee meetings and schedules of the bills a committee intends to consider are posted on bulletin boards outside the House and Senate chambers, usually with 24 hours of advance notice. Committee meeting schedules are also available on the Legislative Service Office's webpage at legisweb.state.wy.us.
      Committee meetings are public, but small committee meeting rooms, short notice, and the rapid pace of action during our short legislative sessions limits public participation. Usually, if a controversy is anticipated, committee chairs will attempt to schedule a larger room in another building and provide more notice of the hearing.
      Committees may make one of three recommendations on a bill: (1) "do pass"; (2) "do pass with amendments"; or (3) "do not pass." If a bill is heavily amended in committee, a substitute bill may be prepared and offered on the floor. A "do not pass" recommendation effectively kills a bill; the same result can be achieved if the committee chair simply sits on the bill until it is too late for consideration on the floor.
      Since the 1993-94 biennium, committee votes that pass a bill (with or without amendments) have been recorded in the legislative journals. Committee votes that do not pass a bill are not recorded.

Floor Debate
      Bills that have cleared committees and are awaiting consideration by the entire House or Senate are placed on a list called general file. The Majority Floor Leader controls the order in which bills are listed on general file, and may change the order of bills on general file from one day to the next.
      Wyoming's short legislative sessions usually guarantee that bills at the bottom of general file will die for lack of time, so the Majority Floor Leader may single-handedly assure the demise of certain bills simply by putting them at the end of the list.
      A bill heard on the floor goes through three readings: Committee of the Whole, Second Reading, and Third Reading (Final Passage). These debates and votes occur on consecutive days unless a bill is laid back or the legislators vote to suspend the rules.
      Committee of the Whole is designed to be a freewheeling debate where questions are asked and answered, and opinions are freely expressed. Consequently, there are no time limits on debate or the number of times a legislator may speak. A bill may be amended - sometimes beyond recognition - yet no votes are recorded on the amendments. If the bill does not receive enough voice or standing votes at the end of Committee of the Whole debate to go on to second reading, a roll call vote is recorded.
      Second Reading is usually a formality, although amendments may be offered and voted on. There may be limits on the number of times a legislator may speak, and for how long. Roll call votes may be taken on amendments if a member requests them.
      The Wyoming Constitution requires that roll call votes be taken on final passage of a bill (the end of Third Reading). Roll call votes may also be taken on third reading amendments by request. Legislators may speak only twice on the same action and time limits may be set.

Conference Committees
      Once a bill is approved in the house of origin, it must go through the same process all over again in the other house. If the bill passes both houses and the final two versions differ, the bill returns to the house of origin for a concurrence vote. If the house of origin does not concur with the version enacted by the second house, a conference committee is appointed to resolve the differences.
      The conference committee consists of three members from each house appointed by the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate; each set of three includes two members who voted for the bill and one who did not. For budget bills, special conference committees with larger memberships are created.
      The first conference committee may alter only those parts of the bill that differ between the House and Senate versions. If the first conference committee cannot reach a compromise, or if the committee's compromise is not accepted by either the House or Senate, then a second conference committee may be appointed. The second committee is free to change anything in the entire bill, even sections that were passed identically by the House and Senate.
      Each compromise bill reported out from a conference committee must be passed by both houses, starting with the house of origin. A bill may clear all the hurdles necessary to become law and falter at the very end because a conference committee cannot reach an acceptable compromise or simply runs out of time.

Role of Legislative Committees
Each house of the Wyoming Legislature has 12 standing committees, which are permanent committees covering specific subject areas. These include:

Judiciary

Appropriations

Revenue

Education

Agriculture, Public Lands & Water Resources

Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources

Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions

Transportation & Highways

Minerals, Business & Economic Development

Labor, Health & Social Services

Rules & Procedure(s)

Journal

      Following introduction of a bill, the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate refers the bill to a standing committee. As noted earlier, committees are not required to consider all bills referred to them, nor must they consider bills in the order referred. The committee chair controls what will be considered and when.
      Although bills technically cannot be killed in committee, they can be returned with a "do not pass" recommendation, which means they will not be brought up for debate. Bills also may be held in committee without action until it is too late to bring them to the floor.
      The majority party of the Legislature controls the selection of committee chairs, so chairs are always members of the majority party. Since the majority party in Wyoming is the Republican Party, committee chairs are all Republicans. The rest of each committee's membership is divided between political parties according to the relative proportion of both parties' membership in the Legislature. Each party follows its own methods for choosing which members will be assigned to which committees.
      For the 2003-2004 biennium, most House committees had seven Republicans and two Democrats. The exceptions were Appropriations (five Republicans and two Democrats), Revenue (six Republicans and three Democrats), Labor (six Republicans and three Democrats), Journal (one member from each party), and Rules & Procedures (ten Republicans and two Democrats). All the Senate committees except Journal had three Republicans and two Democrats, with one from each party on the Journal Committee.
      Legislators serving on the Judiciary and Appropriations Committees usually do not have any other committee assignments, because of the heavier workload these committees carry. Other legislators generally serve on two or three committees.
      During the interim between legislative sessions, the counterpart House and Senate committees meet together as a joint interim committee, e.g., the Joint Interim Judiciary Committee. The Management Council of the Legislature assigns topics to study to each joint interim committee topics during the interim, and interim committees often develop and sponsor bills for the next legislative session. Joint interim committee meetings are open to the public.
      The Legislature may also establish temporary or permanent select committees on special topics. For example, during this biennium temporary select committees will work on school facilities issues and issues related to legal representation for juveniles.

Offices of the Legislature
      The Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate are the top leadership positions in the House and Senate, respectively. These individuals and the rest of the leadership all belong to the majority party (currently Republican).
      The Speaker and President have a major role in selecting committee chairs and the majority party membership of each committee. They also refer bills to committees, they select the members of conference committees, and they recognize legislators to speak during debate. All legislators take turns presiding over Committee of the Whole.
      The Speaker Pro Tempore of the House and Vice President of the Senate act in the absence of the Speaker or President, and usually have moved on to become Speaker or President at the next session.
      The Majority Floor Leader controls the order of general file (the list of bills reported back favorably from committees that are awaiting floor debate). This position is more powerful than it sounds because Wyoming's short legislative sessions do not allow enough time for debate of every bill on general file. The bills at the top of the list are debated and the ones at the bottom are not. The Majority Floor Leader may rearrange the list at will, so a bill at the top of the list one day may be at the bottom the next day. The Majority Floor Leader single-handedly may promote or destroy a bill just by placement.
      The Majority Whip primarily serves as a liaison between the leadership and the members, informing the leadership of members' views and carrying leadership directives back to the other members. The Whip is also responsible for making sure members are on the floor for key votes. In the past, the Whip has usually moved up to become Majority Floor Leader.
      There are also a Minority Leader and a Minority Whip, which comprise the leadership of the minority (currently Democratic) party. The Minority Leader is the chief spokesperson for the minority party; the Whip holds essentially the same responsibilities as the Majority Whip, but for the minority party.

Term Limits
      A ballot initiative to enact term limits for Wyoming legislators was passed by 77% of the voters in 1992. The 1992 initiative held members of the House of Representatives to six years of service (three terms) and members of the Senate to 12 years (three terms).
      In 1995, the Legislature enacted the State Legislative Service Equalization law, which equalized term limits at 12 years in each house (six two-year House terms or three four-year Senate terms).
      Proponents of the original term limits initiative then attempted to repeal the Legislature's action by referendum. They succeeded, for the first time in Wyoming's history, in qualifying the referendum for the 1996 general election ballot. But getting on the ballot is not the only hurdle faced by initiatives and referenda. According to the Wyoming Constitution, they must pass by a majority of the total votes cast in the election, not just a majority of votes cast on the referendum itself.
      Consequently, although the referendum won by 104,544 to 90,138, it fell short of the 107,923 that constituted a majority of the total votes cast statewide in the 1996 general election. Therefore, it failed, and the term limit law of 12 years of maximum uninterrupted service for both representatives and senators stood.
      Twelve legislators finished their 12th year of service in the House or Senate in 2004, and would have been term-limited out of the Legislature under the law. But in May 2004 the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down the term limits law as unconstitutional, in response to a lawsuit filed by two term-limited legislators and two citizens. The Supreme Court found that the qualifications for the Wyoming Legislature as defined in the Constitution are exclusive and cannot be added to by statute. The Supreme Court decision made it clear that the only way term limits could be enacted in Wyoming would be through a constitutional amendment.

Role of the Governor in the Legislative Process
      The hand of the executive branch also reaches into the legislative process. The Governor may suggest legislation and lobby on bills just like any other citizen.
      The biennial budget bill to fund the operation of state government is first assembled in the Governor's office. The Governor receives budget requests for the coming two years from each state agency, modifies them into one comprehensive state budget, and submits his recommended budget to the Joint Appropriations Interim Committee as the starting point for legislative debate.
      Once a bill passes both houses of the Legislature, it goes to the Governor, who either signs it, allows it to become law without his/her signature, or vetoes it. A veto may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses.
      Under the Wyoming Constitution, the Governor has only three days (not counting Sundays) to sign, veto or allow a bill to become law without signature. After the Legislature adjourns, the Governor has 15 days to act on the remaining bills.

Equality State Policy Center
340 West B Street Suite 203
Casper WY 82601
307-472-5939
dneal@equalitystate.org

www.equalitystate.org