Committees play a critical role in the Georgia legislative session, which kicked off Jan. 13. These smaller groups of legislators focused on specific policy areas are the ones who actually determine a bill’s fate — whether it moves forward, is amended, or is rejected.
“The committee stage is so critical because it literally determines what bills actually get passed, changed, or defeated,” said Christopher Bruce, the policy director for the ACLU of Georgia. After a bill is assigned to a committee, lawmakers often make significant changes. “It changes most of the time – and 99% of the time, that change happens in committees,” Bruce said.
Here’s a breakdown of how committees shape a bill as it moves through the Georgia General Assembly’s 40-day legislative session.
Introducing a bill
Legislation begins when a lawmaker in one of the legislature’s two chambers – the House of Representatives or the Senate – drafts a bill. Any of the 236 elected House and Senate members can file a bill for consideration within their chamber. Once it’s filed and assigned a number, the legislator sponsoring the bill reads it aloud to the full chamber on the next legislative day. Called a “first reading,” this is largely procedural since no debate occurs at this stage.
Next, the chamber’s presiding officer – either the Speaker of the House or the President of the Senate – assigns the bill to a standing committee, based on its subject matter. The House has 38 standing committees, while the Senate has 28, covering topics such as banking and finance; agriculture and consumer affairs; economic development; and education and youth.
For instance, a bill concerning education policy would typically go to the chamber’s Education Committee, where lawmakers with expertise or interest in that area will deliberate its merits.
Standing committees do the vetting
These standing committees play a pivotal role as gatekeepers in vetting bills. This is where the detailed work of reviewing and debating a bill happens, which can include testimony from lobbyists, state officials, and regular citizens. This is also where the bulk of the changes to a bill occur.
The committee may:
- Hold hearings, so interested parties, including members of the public, can testify about the bill’s implications.
- Amend the bill, as committee members propose changes to address concerns and improve the legislation.
- Then vote on the bill – either as written, with amendments, or via a substitute bill.
If the standing committee votes to approve the bill, it then undergoes further scrutiny by the chamber’s Rules Committee. It’s this committee that decides whether to schedule the bill to go back to the full House or Senate chamber for further debate. The bill is again read before the full chamber, then lawmakers can weigh in, and, finally, the chamber takes a vote. If the bill passes, it moves forward to the other chamber for further discussion and amendments in committee – and, finally, another floor vote.
Public hearings are an essential part of the committee process, allowing advocates, lobbyists, and everyday citizens to share their views. “We are offering information outside of the legislator’s opinions to show the viewpoints of our special interests.” Bruce said. Often lobbyists represent special interests such as real estate developers or banks. That said, they can also represent special interests such as affordable housing or foster children. ”We are a special interest as well, but for the people,” Bruce said of the ACLU of Georgia.
“If you get enough people, especially for individual districts on an issue, that can sway a legislator,” he said, adding that legislators are generally swayed by “morality, policy, or elections. Morality issues touch the heart.”
A bill’s cross-chamber journey
If a House or Senate standing committee does not approve a bill, its journey is over and it is effectively dead unless revived through special procedures.
A standing committee can kill a bill by voting no or voting to table the bill – or it can simply delay taking a vote at all before Crossover Day, which occurs on the 28th day of the session. That’s the final day for a bill to get approved by either the House or the Senate so that it can “cross over” to the other chamber. Unsurprisingly, the majority of bills die in committee.
When a standing committee votes to table a bill, that typically signals its journey is over. However, on rare occasions, a tabled bill can be revived. That can happen if lawmakers on the House or Senate floor invoke a procedural move to “blast” a bill out of committee, forcing it to be reconsidered by the full chamber.
Bills that do make it to the other chamber by Crossover Day undergo the same committee process and then, finally, a vote. If the Senate votes to approve a bill originating in the House, then it goes back to the House for final approval and vice versa. That is because the bill has likely been modified in committee along the way – sometimes unrecognizably so.
This is where another type of committee – the conference committee – can come into play. If the House doesn’t like the changes the Senate has made, but the Senate insists on them, the two chambers form a conference committee to try and reach a compromise. A bill must pass both chambers by the 40th day of the session, known as Sine Die, to make it to the governor’s desk to either sign or veto.
Watch out for bill-tapping
Lawmakers can get around the committee vetting process through what’s called “bill tapping,” or “bill hijacking.” If a bill is “germane” — or relevant — to another bill’s topic, lawmakers can combine the two.
Typically, the “tapped” bill is incorporated as an amendment to a bill that’s either more comprehensive or more popular. This happens when lawmakers either want to streamline legislation – or to ensure that a measure passes that might otherwise fail on its own.
The time to look out for bill tapping is right before either Crossover Day or Sine Die because that’s when legislators are trying to get their bills across the finish line. This tactic can be controversial because it can allow unvetted provisions in the “tapped” bill provisions to pass with minimal scrutiny. What’s more, the definition of “germane” is often flexible, depending on the interpretation of a committee chair or a chamber’s presiding officer, Bruce said.
“If a bill has already passed one committee, it’s passed that committee in that certain language, for those certain people,” Bruce explained. “Then it goes to the other chamber, and they strip out all the language or add on to the language. That means that language has not gone through the same scrutiny.”
The issue, he said, is that the provisions from the bill that get tacked on evade committee oversight — and that makes it difficult for the public to ask questions about it. When these altered bills go before the full chamber for final approval, lawmakers are limited to a simple up-or-down vote on the entire package. “It bypasses the democratic process,” he said.
FIND OUT MORE
- To learn more about how the Georgia General Assembly – and how you can get involved, check out our explainer on Georgia Lawmaking 101.
- Wondering how to contact your House and Senate representatives? Do you want to find out about a particular bill – or what bills have been filed so far this session? Or what House and Senate committee meetings are coming up? You can easily find all of that information on the Georgia General Assembly’s website.