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How a Bill Becomes a Law

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New York State Capitol BuildingNew York State Capitol BuildingThe New York State Senate and Assembly author environmental laws through Standing Committees. Committees in both houses which focus on environmental issues include Agriculture, Environmental Conservation, Energy (and Telecommunications is included in the Senate), Health and Transportation, and Water Resources (Senate Only). Committee meetings are open to the public, unless the chairperson in the Senate or two-thirds of the committee members in the Assembly rule otherwise (on a meeting to meeting basis). Committee calendars (and later in the process, Senate or Assembly calendars) provide advance notice of when a bill is being considered. These calendars are now available online, making it much easier to track legislative goings-on.

Bills must be introduced by a Senator or member of the Assembly. If the Governor, Attorney General, or a private citizen wishes to have a bill introduced, a Senator or Assembly member must sponsor it. To increase the odds of a bill making it, one should seek as sponsor the chairperson of the committee to which the bill is assigned. Due to the unique power accorded the majority leader of each house, minority members (Democrats in the Senate, Republicans in the Assembly) wield virtually no power.

When a bill is introduced, it is assigned a chamber prefix ("S" for Senate and "A" for Assembly), and a number. Although an identical bill may be introduced in both houses, the numbers need not correspond (i.e., S.123 and A.234 could be the same bill).

Once a bill is introduced, it is referred to the appropriate committee. Possible actions of a committee include holding a public hearing, amending the bill, issuing a report, holding it for consideration, or advancement. In both houses, proposed bills must undergo legal and financial scrutiny.

If a bill advances out of committee, it will go to the Codes Committee to verify its lawfulness and the Ways and Means Committee (Assembly) and the Finance Committee (Senate) to assess its financial impact. After passing through these committees, all bills visit the Rules Committee in their respective chambers for a final check before they can go to the floor for a vote.

The Rules Committee, the most powerful committee as all bills are referred to it, is chaired by the Speaker in the Assembly and the Majority Leader in the Senate. In Rules, the bill sits for a minimum three-day waiting period known as the "aging process." Of course, the Rules Committees can hold up the bill beyond this period, or the Governor can send a "message of necessity" to get the bill to the floor sooner. Only after Rules may the bill come to a floor vote.

In order for a bill to become law, identical versions must pass the Senate and Assembly. In other bi-cameral institutions, such as the U.S  Congress with the House and the Senate, different versions of bills may be passed, then conference committees work to resolve the differences before legislation is sent to the President. In New York State, these conference committees do not formally exist. Typically, it has been the practice of the Majority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker of Assembly and the Governor to meet behind closed doors at the end of session to come to an agreement on their respective priority lists, and thus decide which bills are brought to the floor for a vote.

In the past few years, after much criticism of the resulting non-accountability of this system, the Legislature has opened up the process somewhat by establishing unofficial conference committees at the end of session in major policy areas, including environmental issues. These conference committees are open to the public, which can then play a role in last-minute lobbying to bring a bill to a floor vote. More often, however, bills which pass in one house will not make it out of committee in the other. "One house bills" are often used to put that house on record with regard to a certain issue or constituency, or to embarrass or pressure the other house to take some action.

Over 10,000 bills are introduced each session; several thousand make it to the floor; and in recent years about 5% of those bills make it to the Governor, most of which are signed into law. Again, thanks to the extreme power exercised by each house's majority, it can easily be the case that bills which did not go through the official process outlined above could still become law.
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