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Last Thursday marked the last day that the House and Senate were able to vote on bills. The next phase of the session began on Friday: it is Committee of Conference time.
We thought you, our readers, might be interested in how this fairly mysterious part of the legislative process actually works.
In many cases where a bill gets amended in the second body, the body that originally passed the bill will just agree to the changes, and then the amended bill heads off to the Governor for review and a decision whether to sign the bill, veto the bill, or let the bill become law without signature (which is what happens if the Governor takes no action).
In cases where the originating body does not agree to the changes made in the second body, however, the House and Senate almost always will form a Committee of Conference that has the task of trying to work out a compromise (in the rather rare circumstance where the first body does not agree to the amendments and does not ask for a Committee of Conference, then the bill dies).
Committees of Conference are made up of four House members and three Senators, appointed by the Speaker of the House and the Senate President, respectively. In contrast to what happens in Congress or in many other states, committees of conference in New Hampshire meet in public session (this does not mean, of course, that all of the discussions among the conferees must take place, or do take place, in public session).
The Committee of Conference produces a report, which recommends the House version of the bill, the Senate version of the bill, or some compromise amendment. Each member of the Committee of Conference must sign off on the final report of the Committee; if even one member does not sign, the bill dies. Typically, however, bills do not die in that fashion, because the Speaker or Senate President will usually replace a conferee that is a sole holdout against an agreement.
There is a limit to what the members of the Committees of Conference can do by way of changes to bills. The House and Senate rules essentially require the conferees to stick to subject matter that was in the House or Senate version of the bill.
The full House and Senate also are limited in what they can do with the Committee of Conference reports. Unlike regular bills that are subject to being amended on the floor, Committee of Conference reports can only be voted up or down in their entirety, and no floor amendments can change what the Committee of Conference has agreed to. If the full House or Senate doesn't like what the conferees have agreed to, the only option is to vote down the report - the bill cannot be separately amended on the floor.
All the Committee of Conference reports need to be signed off by the end of the day on May 26, and the House and Senate meet the following week to vote on the reports (the House has already scheduled its session for June 1). The deadline for action is June 2, so as hard as it is to believe, we have less than two weeks left in the 2016 session!
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