How a Bill Becomes a Law

I got over my Tallahassee trepidation pretty quickly. Traveling up here on Martin Luther King Day was pretty challenging. It’s a long trip to Tallahassee from Melbourne; heck, it’s a long trip from just about anywhere. On the drive it seemed to me putting our capital so far from the mass majority of its citizens sends the message. It appears to me it would be easy to separate yourself from your constituents on that long drive.

Today totally met my expectations. It was about learning. Little things like how to function for 27 days in a hotel room and bigger things, the best way to get to the Capital; just a learning day.

My first objective today was to learn the rules. My appointment with Representative Workman wasn’t until 2PM so I had time to stop by the local office supply store; grab a shuttle to the capital and introduce myself to Senator Bullard’s staff.

With time to spare a stop to visit to Representative Clemens was in order. He’s a dedicated public servant with a terrific legislative aide, Beth to assist him. The Representative was between meetings when I popped in to say hi. It is refreshing to hear his passion. He is prepared to continue to raise this as an issue as long as he serves in office. What a blessing.

Senator Bullard’s legislative staff kept me for over 90 minutes. The Senator met with FL CAN’s president, Cathy Jordan just last week. The staffers were awesome. We covered a lot of ground. One of the things I wanted to learn was what holes need filled in our lawmaker’s education about cannabis.

Last week a friend of FLDecides, our medical cannabis program asked “bill SJR 1028 I looking at the tracking and it says this: 01/10/12 S Introduced -SJ 85 Tuesday, January 10, 2012 8:28 AM -12/08/11 S Referred to Health Regulation; Judiciary; Budget; Rules -SJ 85 Thursday, December 08, 2011 11:20 AM.
What does this mean?”

There are lots of sources to learn how a bill becomes a law but in short, once a bill is filed (introduced) it is referred to committees. In most legislative bodies, the real work happens in committees. Bills introduced in the House are given a H, while Senate bills start with an S. The typical bill goes through the committee process, getting changed and tweaked along the way. Identical bills have to go through both the House and the Senate committees before it goes to the “floor” for a vote.

If the leadership, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House or the Governor really like a particular bill, a bill is likely to sail through the committee process in time to be signed into law by the Governor. On the other hand, if the leadership hates a bill, it will sit – this is often called a “pocket veto”. The bill sits in the Chairpersons ‘pocket’ meaning it never gets heard.

Last year, Representative Clemens’ bill HJR 1407 didn’t have a Senate version. Since there was no Senate version, the bill never got a hearing. Currently we have HJR 353 in the House and SJR 1028 in Senate.

The leadership plays an important role in the legislative process. They, the President of the Senate or Speaker of the House, assign the bill to committees. In the House, Speaker Dean Cannon assigned HJR 353 to three committees, Criminal Justice, Health and Human Services and Judiciary. The Senate has four committees to get through Health Regulations, Judiciary, Budget and Rules.

We have until the 50th day of session, February 28, 2012 to move these two bills through seven committees. Once the bill passes with a favorable recommendation through all of the committees it goes to the full legislative body. The House and Senate each must pass the bill with a 2/3 majority. With 120 members in the House, we must get 81 votes in the House to put the issue on the ballot. In the Senate, with 40 members, we’ll need 27 votes.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the committee process, what we can expect from the legislature and FL CAN’s goals this session.