Back in 2021, I made this video for Moms Demand Action’s Advocacy Day, to explain how a bill moves through the Arizona legislature. It is still relevant today, as the 2022 election did not alter the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the Arizona legislature, although it did change the party in power as the AZ Governor.
For the 2024 AZ state legislative session, the state Senate has 16 Republicans and 14 Democrats, and the state House has 31 Republicans and 29 Democrats. While that may look like almost a 50:50 split in power, that one seat majority makes all the difference because whoever has the majority in each chamber gets to choose the Senate President or House Speaker.
The leaders of the two chambers in the AZ legislature both have tremendous power. They are the ones who choose the chairpeople of the legislative committees, and it may not surprise you that they choose people from their own party for these roles. They also have the sole discretionary power to determine which of the bills submitted by legislators get assigned to committees. If a bill isn’t assigned to a committee – it is dead on arrival. So essentially, these two leaders decide which bills are even allowed a discussion. Just as important, when bills do get passed through a committee, these two leaders decide which bills are scheduled for a final vote. If the Senate President or House Speaker decides they personally don’t want a bill to pass, all they have to do is not schedule it for a vote, even if every other legislator in the chamber would have voted yes.
Similarly, the legislative committee chairs also have power to decide if a bill advances or not through their respective committees because they have the discretionary power to choose which bills end up on the committee schedule. For example, if someone introduces a bill for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and it gets assigned to the Senate Judiciary committee, the chairperson decides if that bill gets scheduled for a committee vote … or not.
For a bill to become a law, it must first be read onto the floor of the chamber in which it was introduced (called a First Read). After that it can be assigned to a committee and it will receive a Second Read (a formality). From there, the committee chairperson needs to schedule it for a committee hearing. The bill, either amended or as written, must then be passed by a simple majority of the committee to progress.
At this point, the leader of the relevant chamber (Senate President or House Speaker) will need to schedule it for the Committee of the Whole (COW) where the entire chamber will discuss the bill (and possibly propose amendments). An informal vote is often taken during COW. Once a bill is through COW, it can be scheduled for a Third Read – sometimes this happens immediately and sometimes it occurs days to weeks later. Don’t be fooled by the name ‘Third Read’ – this is the official vote by the chamber on the bill. For most bills, a simple majority passes the bill. From there, the bill will move to the other chamber and go through the exact same process on the other side.
Once a bill has successfully passed through both chambers, it will be sent to the AZ Governor. The Governor has five days while the legislature is in session (10 if they are adjourned) to either sign or veto the bill. If she takes no action, the bill becomes law by default. If a bill does become a law, it doesn’t officially go into effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends (although there are special emergency actions that can be taken to circumvent this rule).
So, in summary, the AZ Governor, Senate President, and House Speaker all have the power to stop a bill they don’t like from becoming a law. Committee chairpeople have a similar power, but only over the bills assigned to their committee. This makes it very rare for the minority party’s bills to progress (most don’t even get assigned to a committee schedule). In 2023, for example, the minority party introduced 624 bills and the majority party introduced 1051 bills. Of these, only 8 (1.3%) bills from the minority party were sent to the Governor for consideration, while 340 (32.4%) from the majority party were sent to the Governor’s desk (143 of these latter bills were vetoed).
There were a lot of good ideas in those 624 bills – many of which never were even allowed a discussion. The only way these bills will get heard in a future legislative session is if there is a majority of progressive elected officials in office. This is the work of the AZ NOW PAC.
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