Colorado LegiSource

An informational and educational resource for the Colorado General Assembly by the Office of Legislative Legal Services.

Month: May 2022

  • GA Adjourns After Just 120 Days (Phew!)

    GA Adjourns After Just 120 Days (Phew!)

    by Julie Pelegrin

    For the first time in two years, the General Assembly adjourned May 11, 2022, on the 120th consecutive calendar day after it began on January 12th. While we may not consider this session normal by all standards (no one wants all-night debates as the new normal), it at least began and ended on time.

    The number of bills introduced falls within the normal range, as well. Legislators introduced 657 bills during the 2022 legislative session, which is comparable to the 623 bills introduced in 2021, 651 bills introduced in 2020, and 598 bills introduced in 2019, but pretty far short of the 721 introduced in 2018.

    That’s not to say everything ran on time throughout the 2022 session. With just one month left in the session, there were still 186 bills on a committee calendar in the house of introduction (i.e., those bills had not progressed through the legislative process beyond initial introduction). When the session dwindled down to two weeks there were still 152 bills in the first house committee, but with only a week remaining, just 39 bills remained in the first house committee. With six working days left in the session, the House and the Senate combined had 287 bills awaiting action on the calendar. They passed or killed 261 of them, leaving just 26 bills to die on the calendar (deemed lost or deemed postponed indefinitely) when the legislature adjourned.

    The term “working day” also took on a new meaning this session, mainly for the House of Representatives. At least twice, the House began debating bills on second reading on one day and continued those debates through the night and into the next morning. The first time – March 11-12 – they began debating bills on second reading at about 10:20 a.m. on Friday and didn’t wrap up until about 11:15 a.m. Saturday. The second time – May 9-10 – they began debating bills around 5:00 p.m., but this time they finished early – about 6:30 a.m. on May 10 – then came back for more at 11:00 that day and didn’t finish until about midnight. Overall, in the last five working days of the session, the House adjourned after 11:00 p.m. each night, and the Senate worked until at least 10:45 p.m. each of those nights except one. By the time the final gavel came down in the House at 11:35 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11 (10:55 p.m. in the Senate), legislators, staff, lobbyists, and anyone still watching on YouTube were ready for some sleep.

    That was the 2022 legislative session. What’s in store for the 2022 interim and the 2023 session?

    Beginning in July, 16 legislative interim study committees are authorized to begin meeting on a wide variety of topics including health insurance, school finance, jail standards, judicial discipline, transportation, water, and wildfires. Each interim committee is authorized to recommend bills to the Legislative Council. Because 2022 is an election year, the Legislative Council must meet no later than October 15 to decide whether to approve the bills for introduction during the 2023 legislative session.

    And speaking of elections, all of the seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November. Eight of the incumbent representatives are term limited and cannot run again for their House seats; another 13 representatives are either running for another office or have decided not to run for other reasons. In the Senate, approximately half of the seats are up for election. Six of the incumbent senators are term limited and so will not be returning, and four others are either running for another office or have decided not to run for other reasons.

    So, when the Seventy-fourth General Assembly convenes on Monday, January 9, 2023, there will be at least 21 new representatives and 10 new senators. At least two of the persons elected to leadership positions in the House – Speaker of the House and Majority Leader –and at least one of the persons elected to a leadership position in the Senate – the Minority Leader – will be new to their positions. And that’s just the minimum amount of change that can be expected.

    For now, the legislative staff will quietly work to wrap up the work from the 2022 session, including preparing the 2022 C.R.S. for publication, writing final fiscal notes and summaries of the legislation that passed, and preparing the final appropriations report for the 2022-23 fiscal year; legislators will return to their districts to campaign and reconnect with their constituents; and everyone will hope for a little downtime before it’s time to prepare for the 2023 legislative session.

    Peace out, ya’ll.

     

    [1] Not surprising, the passage rate dipped to 51% with the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and an abbreviated legislative session lasting just 84 days.

  • What does it take to get a bill to the Governor?

    What does it take to get a bill to the Governor?

    by Kathy Zambrano and Anja Boyd

    You’d think that once a bill makes it through both houses and the first house concurs with second house changes, if necessary, the bill would land on the Governor’s desk in a day. But in most cases, there’s a lag time of up to five working days – oftentimes more as we move to the end of the legislative session – before an enacted bill gets presented to the Governor for action. So what really happens to a bill before it is delivered to the Governor on act paper?

    First thing to know is that, pursuant to Rule 18 of the Joint Rules of the Senate and House of Representatives, “the enrolling clerk of the originating house and the Office of Legislative Legal Services shall coordinate and work together jointly to prepare the bill as passed in final form. The Office of Legislative Legal Services shall prepare the bill in the form in which it shall appear in the session laws. . . “. So over the years, the House and Senate enrolling rooms and the OLLS have developed a process that allows for the efficient preparation of the bills on act paper and the development of the Session Laws.

    Once the enrolling room receives a bill for enrolling into an act, they verify sponsors before delivering the bill to the Publications Team in the OLLS. But before they can even do that, they typically prioritize their other work to focus on engrossing bills as they pass on second and third reading, since those bills must be made available the same day they pass on the floor, and on preparing preamended bills that are reported out of committees so that those are available to legislators and the public as soon as possible.

    Once the Publications Team receives the bill for enrolling, they begin processing the bill by checking the bill for errors that may be fixed by correction schedule[1]. Then they input the bill’s information into the bill disposition tables and the Red Book, which is a tabulation of all C.R.S. sections affected by bills passed during the legislative session. The bill disposition tables and the Red Book are mandatory parts of the Session Laws, which are prepared by the OLLS following each legislative session as required by statute. By preparing the red book entries at this point, it allows the Publications Team to determine whether new statutory sections added in the bill need to be renumbered to make room for other new statutory sections added by other bills and which provisions need to be harmonized or superseded. This is the beginning of the steps in preparation of the Colorado Revised Statutes.

    Once the Publications Team finishes with the bill, they deliver it to the subject matter team in the OLLS that is responsible for the bill to prepare an advance unofficial copy. The subject matter team reviews the bill attachments for completeness and accuracy as a courtesy to the House and Senate front desks, then they verify which version of the bill should be enrolled, check the sponsors on the bill, input any conference committee report changes that were adopted, make sure all amendments that were passed appear in the bill, and check to ensure that no current law has been dropped and that all new language appears in capital letters. If they find grammatical or punctuation errors, they include those on the correction schedule before making any corrections in the copy. If the subject matter team is enrolling a bill during the legislative session, then other session-related work often takes priority, like bill and amendment preparation, so there could be delays.

    When the unofficial copy of a bill is ready, it is delivered to the enrolling room for proofing. Yep, the bill is proofed yet again even though it has been proofed after each reading during its travels to become a final act. The enrolling room also checks sponsorship of the bill and ensures that any corrections to the bill and any conference committee report that was adopted appear in the copy. Great care is taken to ensure that the bill is correctly enrolled.

    When the enrolling room completes their proofing, they deliver the bill to the Publications Team again; the Publications Team reviews it and determines whether further grammatical or punctuation corrections need to be made. The bill is then put on act paper by the subject matter team, subject to other priorities. The act paper copy, which is the version of the bill the Governor receives for signing, is then delivered to the appropriate enrolling room.

    Now that the enrolling room has the final act copy, they prepare a fancy bill jacket that goes along with the act to the Governor’s office. But before it goes to the Governor, there are a few more stops on a bill’s journey to the Governor’s desk. First, if it’s a House bill, it goes to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and Chief Clerk for their signatures and then to the President of the Senate and the Senate Secretary for their signatures. If it’s a Senate bill, the President and Senate Secretary get to sign first. And, of course, messages are prepared to notify the body that the bill was signed by the Speaker or President, if the legislative session is still in progress.

    So then, after all of that action takes place, the enrolling room contacts the Governor’s office and makes arrangements for someone to be physically present in the Governor’s office to sign for and receive the bill.

    And now you know what really happens before a bill lands on the Governor’s desk.

     

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    [1] The correction schedule is a list of grammatical and punctuation errors that may appear in a bill, along with numbering changes required due to other bills amending the same section, which are automatically corrected when the bill is enrolled into an act.