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A Citizen's Guide to Lobbying the Minnesota Legislature

Glossary - Making Sense of Legislative Language


Author: An author is a legislator who agrees to sign and help draft your idea for a bill. It is important to select authors carefully, and help prepare them for floor debate when they will be alone without any outside help.
Bicameral Legislature: A bicameral legislature is a legislature that contains two houses, typically a House of Representatives and a Senate.
Biennium: A biennium is the two year legislative period. This term begins in January of an odd numbered year and ends in December of an even numbered year.
Bill: A bill is a proposal aimed to create a new law, change an existing law, repeal a law, or amend the constitution.
Calendar: A list of bills that have passed through the committee process and debate, and await their third reading and final passage in the House or Senate.
Companion: All bills that pass through the legislature have are companion bills, meaning that as one bill starts in one chamber, there is a bill with identical language in the other house called its companion.
Committee: A committee is a group of legislators in the House or in the Senate, that address particular issues. The members of these committees are appointed by the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House. These committees are assigned bills which they review and take action on.
Committee of the Whole: The committee of the whole is the entire legislative body acting as a committee and debating and amending bills on the floor.
Conference Committee: A conference committee is a group of six or 10 members, with equal members from the Senate and House, who strive to strike an agreement between different House and Senate versions of a bill.
Chair: The chair is the presiding officer of a committee and has complete discretion over whether to accept a bill author’s request of a committee hearing. The chair can also require that bills referred to other committees receive a hearing in his or her own committee before being placed on the floor.
Delete All Amendment: A delete all amendment is an amendment that deletes everything in a bill or previous amendment. A legislator offering a delete all amendment is proposing to eliminate all of the text in a bill or amendment and replace it with brand new language.
Engrossment: An engrossment is the current form of a bill with all amendments and incorporated into the text.
General Orders: The general orders is a list of bills in the Senate that have had their second readings and are ready for debate on the floor.
General Register: The general register is list of bills in the House that have been referred to the floor for a vote.
Hopper: The hopper is a term for several wire bins located in the State Capitol complex that serve as repositories for bill jackets that are intended for introduction. A bill must be placed in the hopper before it can be introduced on the House or Senate floor.
Jacket: A jacket is a colored piece of paper attached to the back of a bill by the Revisor. This jacket is used to record important information about the bill as it moves through the legislative process.
Majority Leader: The majority leader is the head member of the party who has the most members elected into the House and Senate.
Omnibus: Omnibus is a term used to describe complex bills. These bills usually deal with taxes, education, appropriations, and other bills that contain several different proposals.
President of the Senate: The President of the Senate is the presiding officer for all members of the Senate body. He or She is responsible for assigning bills to committees after a motion for a committee hearing has been requested by a bill’s chief author.
Reading: A reading is a report of a bill to the body. This is done three times for each bill throughout the legislative process.
Resolution: A resolution is a proposal that urges another body to refrain from taking a certain action. This can also simply express the opinions and sentiments of a body.
Revisor: All bills must be sent to the Revisor in the Revisor’s office to be jacketed before they can be introduced.
Sine Die: Sine Die is a Latin term, meaning “without signing a day for further meeting.” The legislature adjourns sine die at the end of every biennium, without appointing a day that the legislature will convene again.
Speaker of the House: The Speaker of the House is the presiding officer of the House of Representatives. He or she is responsible for appointing bills to committees.
Special Orders: Special orders are a list of bills given priority consideration by the Rules Committee. Bills on special orders are immediately debated and possibly amended, and given their third readings.
Verbal Amendment: If no legislator requires a written amendment, they can simply be presented orally. However, amendments are usually drafted before consideration in committee, where most amendments take place.
Veto: The Governor has the power to veto a bill, thereby not signing and refusing to make it law. However, if the legislature re-passes the bill with a two-thirds majority, the bill becomes law without the Governor’s signature.
Written Amendment: Any amendment must be proposed in writing if any single member of the legislature requests that it be in writing.

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