I find it interesting how much the political process can vary by state. We’ve taken a look at how many bills there are, how wordy those bills are, how states use amendments, how long it takes a bill to pass, how legislators vote, and so on. This post will tackle another big part of the process of a bill becoming a law — committees.
In general once a bill is introduced it goes to one or more appropriate committees for review and possibly modification (and often, to die). How state committees work varies, of course, but most are fairly similar to the federal process, as brilliantly illustrated in this graphic by Mike Wirth and Suzanne Cooper Guasco:
You’ll see committee work comes as soon as the bill is introduced, in the yellow section of the graphic above. All conceivable topics have a committee to match. Here’s a list of Senate committees in Alabama, as a fairly standard example of the kinds of committees states will have:
Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry
Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance
Senate Committee on Business and Labor
Senate Committee on Confirmations
Senate Committee on Constitution, Campaign Finance, Ethics and Elections
Senate Committee on County and Municipal Government
Senate Committee on Commerce, Transportation and Utilities
Senate Committee on Children, Youth Affairs and Human Resources
Senate Committee on Education
Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Senate Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Accountability
Senate Committee on Finance and Taxation- Education
Senate Committee on Finance and Taxation- General Fund
Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
Senate Committee on Health
Senate Committee on Judiciary
Senate Committee on Job Creation and Economic Development
Senate Committee on Local Legislation No. 1
Senate Committee on Local Legislation No. 2
Senate Committee on Local Legislation No. 3
Senate Committee on Local Legislation No. 4
Senate Committee on Rules
Senate Committee on Small Business
Senate Committee on Transportation and Energy
Senate Committee on Tourism and Marketing
Senate Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs
So, how different are the states when it comes to this key part of the legislative process? Let’s start by taking a look at how many committees each state has (if you are reading this in chrome you might need to click on the shield in your browser address bar to get the maps to run; OpenHeatMap doesn’t use https yet):
So … that’s a lot of committees. Some of the states are more full time than others, like IL and CA, so perhaps those make sense. (see our session calendar for details). And New Hampshire has what you might reasonably call a surfeit of legislators (see this old eye candy blog post for a look at how many legislators there are by state), so maybe that makes sense too.
Here’s how they break down between chambers (total across all states):
As you can see, overall there are more house committees than senate committees. Indeed, only 10 states have fewer house committees than senate committees. And only three states have the same number of house and senate committees (AK, MT, and SD)
Here’s how Utah (smallest proportion of house committees) compares to Pennsylvania (biggest proportion of house committees):
As you can see, these are two totally different approaches for how committees should work. Which is better? Well, you can look at this post to see which is most efficient (hint, Utah passed 57% of their bills, Pennsylvania passed just under 4% of theirs). But “better” is in the eye of the beholder, right?
Now let’s look at committee makeup. How big are these committees? Here’s a map of the average number of people in a committee by state:
If there’s a rhyme or reason to the size of committees I don’t see it. Maybe you see a pattern? Still, it can be helpful to know how big committees tend to be in a state, so you can know what you’re up against if you hope to influence a committees vote on a bill.
Also, it’s interesting to note, the best size for a meeting, according to Harvard Business Review at least, is 8 people. A few states manage to be in that range, but some overshoot by quite a bit…
And here’s the average number of committees a legislator is in by state:
Not surprisingly, the more full time legislatures tend to have legislators participating in more committees each. Although Alaska and Utah stand out as bucking that trend.
Quick note, if you look at a legislator on BillTrack50, you’ll see a tab listing the committees a legislator is on. If you click on the “detail” link, you’ll see who else is on that committee too. So the above are generalities, but you can always see the specifics of a committee you need to know more about.
As always, please contact us if you have any questions, suggestions, or if we can help you in any way. And do share any insights you have about how committees work in your state in the comments below.
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