HOW BILLS BECOME LAWS!

An Opinion By Jan Bergemann

Published March 3, 2026

With the 2026 Legislative session coming to a close on Friday, March 13, 2026 (hopefully you are not superstitious), there are a lot of discussions going on debating if certain bills will make it to the Governor’s desk.

Bills, when filed, should have companion bills, meaning a bill should be filed in the Senate and in the House. The bills don’t have to be totally identical, similar is good enough.

The normal way would be that the House and the Senate bill will go its regular way through the assigned committees, ending up in floor votes in House and Senate. But latest at that time they have to be identical.

But there are ways to avoid this lengthy procedure, by using a so-called “germane bill” that had minimum one committee hearing as an engine to push the wording of a bill by adding it to a bill before a vote on the floor of the other chamber – the last committee hearing of the bill is normally the best opportunity. If House and Senate would vote favorably on the wording of the amended bill, the bill would then go to the Governor’s desk for his signature.

In all reality many things can happen to any bill in last second moves and you really don’t know until “SINE DEI” (the adjournment of the legislative session) what happened to the bill you may have followed or even supported. Most bills filed will, after the end of the session, carry the meaningful wording “Died in Committee”.

The process of bills becoming laws is pretty tricky – and even if the bill you support makes it through both chambers, there is always still the time when you have to ask: “Will the Governor sign the bill into law – or will he veto it?”