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If you happened to be following a bill through the final days of this year’s legislative session, there’s a 50% chance you watched it die in conference committee. Of the 421 bills that entered conference negotiations between the House and Senate, only 218 made it out.

The good news is that any bill that didn’t pass this session will have another chance next session. At least, that’s the consolation that legislators tend to offer disgruntled or disappointed advocates. Technically, it’s true.

But in reality only a handful of bills that are carried over are finally passed.

Our Legislature, like most legislatures, operates in two-year periods, also known as a legislative biennium. In theory, most of the heavy lifting can be done in the first year of the biennium, leaving the second year for tweaks and fixes.

For example, in the first year, the State Budget should be developed in detail while, in the second year, it’s just updated. I say “should be” and “in theory” because it rarely goes so smoothly.

Legislators are also encouraged to author fewer bills in the second year of the biennium because any unpassed legislation from the first year will “carry over” to the second. On one hand, this process keeps hope alive for a bill’s advocates and authors. On the other hand, it means committee chairs are juggling a lot of bills in the second year of the biennium, which is also an election year.

In 2022, 2,555 bills carried over from the 2021 legislative session and 2,644 new bills were introduced. 

Given this volume of bills, it’s no wonder things tend to slip through the cracks. So, does a carry-over bill have a chance of passing? Yes. Barely.

In the last five bienniums, an average of 2,660 bills were carried over to the second year and an average of 21 bills passed each year. The odds are slightly better for conference watchers. Most of the carry-over bills that became law were heard in a conference committee the previous year.

You also have a better chance of seeing your bill pass if it was introduced by a committee chair, House leadership or Senate leadership. Nearly two-thirds of the bills that passed fit this category. One-third of the bills that passed were introduced by request of another party.

As with everything else in the Legislature, a carry-over bill’s trajectory is mostly based on who introduced it and who’s lobbying for it. Naturally, bill authors, committee chairs and advocates alike tend to focus their energy on what’s newly put in front of them, so it takes a lot for a bill to gain enough inertia in its second year.

So why bother with carry-over bills?

For legislators, they present an opportunity to fix a problem that arises in the middle of session. It’s not unusual for a committee chair, when facing a emerging issue, to announce that they are looking for a “vehicle” to address the problem.

The contents of a bill must fit its title so, in these situations, committee chairs need to comb through every bill in their committee to find a title that fits. Carry-over bills increase the chances that a committee chair will be able to amend or use a bill to fix an unexpected problem.

Carry-over bills should also save legislators, staff and advocates time by avoiding duplicate bills or reintroductions in the second year of the biennium. If everyone adhered to this practice, it would lessen the volume of legislation that watchdogs need to track each year. However, given the Legislature’s tendency to ignore carry-over bills, legislators have been known to reintroduce the ideas that they like so that they move to the top of the pile.

Though you’re not likely to see a carry-over bill pass, your best bet is to talk to the committee chair in charge of the bill and ask them to move it along. Most carry-over bills that pass are being lobbied for by the governor, a department, a committee chair or other interest holders. To make sure a previous year’s bill gets attention, you need to rally people behind it.

We should also consider whether the current volume of bills legislators are handling is good for government. It’s easy for good ideas to be buried among thousands of bills, and many of those bills are duplicates because each legislator wants to introduce it themselves.

A better practice might be to reduce the number of bills each legislator can introduce, which would encourage them to prioritize and work together on issues where they have common interests. 

Or, we could do what Maine does. While the state allows carry-over bills, committee chairs are required to get a written request approved by legislative leadership in order to hold a bill for the next session.

Adopting this policy might mean that we all have fewer bills to follow and can focus on the ones we care about. Of course, it would also mean that legislative leadership has even more power to decide what gets discussed. So we’d better weigh our reform efforts carefully.