Where Do Avalanches Belong? Pt. 2

Bill Number: HB13-1057

Bill Title: Retain Avalanche Information Center In The Department of Natural Resources

Sponsored by: Representative Diane Mitsch-Bush and Senator Jeanne Nicholson

Committee Hearing: House Appropriations

 

The House Appropriations committee is the second stop for this bill. Recall earlier that it's being sponsored by Representative Mitsch Bush in the House and successfully passed through the House committee Agriculture, Livestock & Natural Resources.

This morning’s hearing on the bill lasted about two minutes. Before Rep. Mitsch Bush was able to even describe1057 Rep. Sonnenberg moved to send it to its next stop, the Committee of the Whole.  

All this travel through committees might have you confused if you’re unfamiliar with the process. Now it’s off to a third committee called “the whole”? Let me take a moment to explain what that is.

After a piece of legislation survives the committee hearings in its current house, either the House or the Senate, it heads back to the originating body to be reported and deliberated by all the members at once. Having all the members of a house able to comment on the bill at once is called the Committee of the Whole, or CoW. It’s a chance for members who weren’t in the committees the bill traveled through to chime in or seriously argue against it, but it’s also a platform for adding amendments to the bill.

Amendments are tweaks and changes to the bill that might alter tiny details or reverse the entire intention. Often members opposed to a bill will offer an amendment that “de-fangs” the bill's enforcement measures, or one that even benefits their own legislative agenda. If a bill is sponsored by a member of the majority party in that house you can almost certainly bet nothing ill will befall it.

Back to our avalanche center bill. It’s headed to the CoW for debate tomorrow morning. Since it’s sponsored by Democrats, the House is controlled by Democrats, and nothing so far has impeded its progress, I would be very surprised if 1057 ran into trouble at this point. After the CoW it will be voted on by all the members Thursday morning.

More on that as it happens.