What happened Friday in the Senate

The following  22 bills had final legislative votes in the Senate Friday and will be ratified (signed by the Lt Governor and Speaker) in session Tuesday and delivered to the Governor later Tuesday afternoon:

2009 NC Session to date

Some stats on the 2009 Regular Session of the North Carolina General Assembly as of July 2, 2009, with some comparisons to 2007:

Session Laws enacted by 7/2/2009:  272 (Of the 272 acts, 182 were signed into law by the Governor, the other 89 were local acts that do not require gubernatorial approval and one was a redistricting bill that likewise becomes law when signed by the presiding officers of the two houses.)

Session Laws enacted by 7/2/2007:   159    (grand total for entire  long session 551)

Thus we are well ahead of the 2007 pace! 

Some of the difference (but not much) is because Governor Perdue has been acting on almost all bills within 5-7 days after they reach her, while Governor Easley almost always took 9-10 days (10 is the maximum)

Date in 2007 we reached 272 Session Laws: July 27, 2007

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Other stats to bookmark and follow:

Bills on the Governor’s Desk: 14 as of noon July 2, 2009

Bills to be ratified:  7 to be ratified July 8 (I know the webpage says July 7, but that is not correct). Ratification is the stage where final action has been taken by both houses and the bills await signature by the presiding officers.

Keeping up with bills in the end game

As bills pass both house and make there way to and fro the Governor’s office (or in the case of local bills, become law immediately), the North Carolina General Assembly has several resources to keep up with new laws:

1) Bills about to be ratified — bills are usually ratified the next legislative day after they are ordered enrolled. Ratification is the stage where bills that have passed both houses have a true copy prepared and are signed by the presiding officer of each house. They are not yet law.

2) Bills pending on the Governor’s desk (this is usually not updated for about 12 hours after the bill is delivered or comes back from the Governor.

3) Enacted laws, showing those public bills  signed by the Governor in order of  bill number,  and showing all enacted laws in order of enactment date (includes public and local), and by bill number (also includes resolutions)

You can also find here a spreadsheet showing which General Statutes and uncodified session laws have been affected by new laws and bills pending ratification

What hath crossover wrought, Part 2

As previously mentioned, there were 303 Senate bills and 424 House bills that passed each house between opening day and Thursday, May 14, 2009, the crossover deadline in the 2009 NC legislative session.

For those wonks, here are more links showing how much went on each day of crossover week. Those links will continue to be good, showing you bill status for those bills as of the day you inquire:

Senate bills passing third reading in the Senate:

 prior to crossover week: 180

 Monday, May 11:         32

 Tuesday, May 12:         16

 Wednesday, May 13:    53

 Thursday, May 14:        22

SENATE TOTAL FOR CROSSOVER WEEK: 123

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House bills passing third reading in the House:

 prior to crossover week: 220

 Monday, May 11:         30

 Tuesday, May 12:         34

 Wednesday, May 13:    55

 Thursday, May 14:        85

HOUSE TOTAL FOR CROSSOVER WEEK: 204

What hath crossover wrought – Part 1

With crossover come and gone for the 2009 Regular Session of the North Carolina General Assembly, I’m getting a lot of calls and emails asking “what made crossover?”

Follow the following hyperlinks, which take you to the:

303 Senate bills and 424 House bills that passed each house between opening day and Thursday, May 14, 2009.  The links will continue to keep you up with the current status of those bills all the way through end of session and beyond.

Short titles added to RSS feed on new bills filings

For those of you who use a feedreader to keep up with news, our RSS feed on new bills  now includes the short title along with the bill number. Thanks to Kelly Stallings of our IT staff for the programming and Ryan Beckwith of Under the Dome for the prodding.

Other bill report feeds can be found linked here.

You can get feeds when you see images like this scattered around our website:

2009 NC legislative rules online

Rules for the 2009 Regular Session of the North Carolina General Assembly are now online:

The Senate permanent rules are here, while for the House of Representatives  you need to look at the House temporary rules for 2009, which reference the permanent rules for 2007 with updated deadlines.

NC floor amendments online

We’ve added another upgrade to the North Carolina legislative website — copies of floor amendments beginning with opening day of the 2009 Regular Session. In the past, to get a floor amendment, you had to go to the bill books in either of the two legislative libraries, where copies of all amendments were filed  within 24 hours with the bill they relate to.

Now, floor amendments (whether passed or failed) will be scanned and uploaded with a link to the bill status page.  For example, there were three floor amendments to Senate Resolution 1. For those amendments prepared by staff, the barcode when scanned links the amendment to the correct bill status page.  The upload is NOT a MSWord document, but a .pdf of a scan (note the three amendments  to SR1 all have handwritten material on them), and some floor amendments are entirely in handwriting.

Here is a cut and paste of the bill status page for SR1, note the hotlinks to the amendments:

Archived audio of 2009 NC House now online

Archive audio of daily North Carolina House of Representatives floor sessions is now available on the official North Carolina House website.

I had noted last year that voterradio. com had archived audio of the 2008 House and Senate sessions online.

2009 NC bill deadlines

Here are the North Carolina General Assembly House and Senate deadlines for getting bill drafting requests to staff, filing those bills, and crossover when non-money bills must clear one house. The deadlines can also be found here on the Legislative website.

 

 

 

2009 House Deadlines 

 

Drafts	To Bill Drafting by 4 pm	Filed in House by 3 pm Wednesdays
Local Bills	Wednesday, March 18	April 1
Public Bills (Not Appropriations or Finance)	Thursday, March 26	April 8
Appropriations and Finance	Wednesday, April 22	May 6

 

 

 

2009 Senate Deadlines

 

Drafts	To Bill Drafting by 3 pm	Filed in Senate by 3 pm Wednesdays
Local	Tuesday, March 3	March 11
Public & Resolutions	Friday, March 13	March 25

 

Crossover Deadline Thursday May 14