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We’re finally nearing the end game in what must seem like an interminable legislative session to those playing along at home. The time for amending bills on the floors of the respective chambers has passed, and we’re now well into conference committee deliberations.
Since we’ve harped on this seemingly every year since this column started in 1989, we’ll pretend we’re doing this in 2019 as a public service to the plethora of freshmen legislators.
Pro tip to the new kids on the block: Throw everything you’ve learned about lawmaking in your first session to date (or in fourth grade civics!) out the back door of the Statehouse, buckle your seat belts, and prepare for a ride like you’ve never experienced before.
When we get to conference committee time, the period during which differing versions of House and Senate bills are reconciled, there are rules, but they are often more honored in the breach, with lots of corners cut.
In theory, legislators should be limiting themselves to language in a conference committee report—the final bill—that had appeared in either the House or Senate version, or both. But theory is for classrooms and not the legislative battleground. Items not even considered in a bill in either chamber can wend their way into the work product, so the public might never have had an opportunity to weigh in, and rank-and-file lawmakers might not even have been able to amend the final product on the floor.
Conference committee reports are voted up or down, and if a given conference panel finds it difficult getting to “yes,” or isn’t amenable to following leadership or caucus direction, conferees can be quickly and easily replaced to reach consensus—or to disrupt it.
A time-honored tactic of veteran lawmakers’ seeking to revive a concept believed dead is to treat a relatively low-profile bill in conference as the equivalent of a “vehicle bill,” those empty vessels introduced by leaders at the beginning of a session reserved to insert content that might have initially been overlooked, needed more massaging or had to be held back to spring a surprise.
The “strip-and-insert” tactic involves deleting all content in a measure in conference and replacing it with entirely new language. In theory, this legislative legerdemain is supposed to be limited to matters that are germane and that have passed at least one chamber. But again, theory and practice are not always dancing partners at conference time.
Veterans of the process remember how a bill dealing with funeral and cemetery services was transformed in conference into a lobby law “reform” measure sought by leadership in the early 1990s—and only new lawmakers batted an eye.
So what should you watch for?
Everything. And anything.
Every bill needs to be monitored in conference, and you should expect attempts to modify bills with seemingly unrelated language.
If an issue deals with finances in any form, there is also a possibility it can land in the budget.
Longtime Senate budget leaders were notorious in the last few decades for inserting last-minute items to the budget—even if they were policy-related and not even fiscal matters.
A retroactive provision providing confidentiality for suppliers of pharmaceuticals used in the administration of the death penalty found its way into the biennial budget after midnight on the final session day in 2017 at the request of the Governor’s Office, so it’s not exactly like this is a quaint practice relegated to the annals of history.
What’s good to see this year: the large number of freshmen sitting as conferees or advisers, roles typically reserved for more senior members.
What’s bad about this: Their inexperience could be exploited, or even worse, they might start learning conference tricks at a younger age.•
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Feigenbaum publishes Indiana Legislative Insight for Hannah News Service. He can be reached at EDF@hannah-in.com.
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