Legislation & Politics

• Guide to Lobbying
• Lobbying Do's & Don'ts
• Legislative Blog

How an Idea Becomes a Law in Minnesota

What happens once a bill has passed both houses?

It is important to remember that, before a bill is signed by the Governor and becomes law, the same bill must pass both bodies. It is not sufficient for two identical bills to pass the House and Senate; the same bill must be passed.

Sierra Club volunteers meet with Representative Rick Hansen
on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives

As a result, once a bill has been passed on either of the House or Senate floors, the bill and its jacket are then physically sent over to the other body for action, and the bill that passed first is substituted for its companion bill in the other body, wherever it might be in the committee process. As a result, there is now only one bill moving through the legislative process instead of two.

For example, let’s say there are two companion bills moving through the legislature: Senate File 145 and House File 436. Senate File 145 is able to quickly work its way through the whole committee process in the Senate, and is passed by the full Senate on the Senate Floor. Meanwhile, House File 436 has been held up by lots of debate and is still sitting in the House Energy committee. After Senate File 145 is passed by the Senate, its jacket is physically carried over to the House. The Senate jacket replaces the House jacket, and the House file is “indefinitely postponed” (i.e. the House bill is killed). As a result, the House is now in possession of a Senate File, and that Senate file will work its way through the committee process in the House and ultimately be voted on by the full House of Representatives.

Now, just because one of the companion files is officially killed through this substitution process, does not necessarily mean that the language in the bill that was killed disappears. Usually, the author of the bill that has been substituted moves to delete all of the language in the bill that came from the other body and then replace that language with the language from the original bill.

So, using the example above, after Senate File 145 is substituted for House File 436, the author of House File 436 would then move to delete all of the language in S.F. 145 and replace it with the language that used to be in House File 436 (which is now officially a dead bill).

Sierra Club Clean Air Organizer, Cesia Kearns, speaks
with Governor Tim Pawlenty about the impacts of the pro-
posed Big Stone II coal plant expansion in South Dakota on
Minnesota’s renewable energy economy.
Photo by Tom Erickson, Office of Governor Tim Pawlenty.

This substitution process occurs wherever the companion bill happens to be in the legislative process. The substitution can occur in a committee, or it can occur on the floor of either the House or Senate.

What happens when the House and Senate pass bills with different language?

Once the bill passes the second house in the same way it passed the first, it is then returned to the House of Origin. If the second House has adopted the exact same language as the first House, the bill is sent to the Revisor’s office and it will be prepared to be signed by the Governor.

However, if the second house amends a bill so it is different from the original bill, conference committees are formed to strike an agreement between the two houses. In this case, both the House and Senate will appoint committees of 3 or 5 members, who will join with an equally sized committee in the other body to resolve their differences. A little known fact is that this group of 6 to 10 people is not a single conference committee, but it is actually two separate and distinct committees. As a result, a majority of all of the Senators and a majority of all the Representatives are needed to approve an agreement, not just a majority of the total number of individuals serving. In other words, if the House and Senate each appoint three person conference committees, it is not sufficient to simply have four individuals concede to the final agreement; there must be at least two Senators and two House members who are in agreement.

Once there is agreement, the conference committees issue a conference report, which is essentially a new bill that contains the compromise that was reached. That report is sent in sequence to the House and Senate floors, where the House and Senate will adopt the conference report and then re-pass the bill as amended. Once a conference report is issued, there can be debate on the House and Senate floors about whether the report should be adopted and whether the compromise reached by the conference committees is sufficient.

However, a conference report cannot be amended on the House or Senate floors; members must defer to the work of the conference committees and either vote for or against the agreement.