Time running out to select which bills may become law

Abbey Bryduck hopes people understand if they catch her glancing at the clock a little more than usual this week.

The first legislative deadline of 2010 arrives at 11:59 p.m. Friday. And Bryduck, administrator of the Minnesota House Transportation and Transit Policy and Oversight Division, knows very well that waiting until the last minute is, well, human nature.

As usual at this time of year, a flurry of bills are being added to (or taken off) the agenda of the committee’s upcoming meetings. And each time it happens, Bryduck fires off an e-mail; the subject line of which, late Tuesday afternoon, said: “Guess what? Bill added.”

“It’s just a combination of things,” she said. “No matter how late or how early deadlines are, people wait until the last minute.”

The first deadline of the year is the time by which House and Senate committees must act favorably on policy bills in their houses of origin, or let those proposals fade into legislative oblivion for the year. Another deadline looms next week: 11:59 p.m. March 19, the time by which committees in both houses must act favorably on bills — or companions of bills — that met the first deadline in the other body.

Those first two deadlines don’t apply to Finance and Taxes committees in each body, or to the House Ways and Means or Rules and Legislative Administration committees, Senate Capital Investment or Senate Rules and Administration committees.

According to Scott Magnuson, director of the Senate Information Office, the first deadline means that a bill must be acted on favorably by every applicable committee — not just one policy committee.

If a House or Senate bill makes it through the first deadline, its companion bill in the other body must make it through all applicable committees on that side of the Capitol by the second deadline.

It’s a sometimes tricky balancing act that is complicated by legislators angling to get their bills heard and keep them alive.

“Senate committees, and their counterpart committees in the House, will work very closely together,” Magnuson said. “They’ll contact each other, and maybe say, ‘We plan on hearing it on Wednesday,’ and the other will say, ‘OK, then we don’t need to hear it this week — we’ll schedule a hearing for next week.’”

Gary Hill, communications director for the Senate DFL Caucus, couldn’t be particularly specific about legislation that caucus members were attempting to keep alive at midweek, and in fact sounded a little Yogi Berra-like in his explanation: “Everybody’s trying to meet the deadline. They won’t know until they don’t know that it’s not going to happen.

“If their particular chair is not going to hear their bills, they’re not going to telegraph it, for obvious reasons.”

Nor was Senate GOP Caucus communications director Michael Brodkorb able to mention any specific policy bills on which members were keeping close tabs: “There’s nothing we’re really tracking that’s going to be affected by the [policy] committee deadline,” he said. “We just don’t have a ton.

“We’re focusing mostly on jobs and the economy, and those mostly fall under the committees that aren’t subject to the deadline.”

Two bills that seemed to be destined for last-minute reprieves were removed from House Commerce and Labor agendas at the 11th hour this week. HF 3170, which would have removed a loophole in state law that allowed some payday-loan providers to operate under a different set of rules than those specifically aimed at regulating the industry, was taken off the agenda after being recommended for passage by the House Labor and Consumer Protection Division (although there were hints that it would be added to today’s agenda), and HF 2583, which would have allowed the holder of an intoxicating liquor license to own and operate a farm winery in the state, was also removed from the committee’s agenda.

A handful of bills were scheduled for hearings Wednesday (after press time), and — assuming that they were recommended for passage and not referred to any other policy committees — had a good chance of making it past the first deadline: SF 2861, which would prohibit state employees and elected officials from using state money at a hotel or meeting facility that “makes pornographic images or performances available to its patrons;” HF 2960, which would require a background check before the transfer of a firearm at a gun show; SF 3112, which would prohibit employment discrimination based on an applicant’s credit history; and SF 2874, which would abolish the Departments of Employment and Economic Development and Labor and Industry and downsize the Department of Commerce.

Several bills appeared headed for oblivion this week, meaning that they either never made it onto a committee’s hearing schedule, or were recommended for passage by an earlier committee but got stalled later.

These include HF 170, which would have allowed Minnesotans to decline delivery of printed telephone directories, HF 3385, which would have extended eligibility for the state’s ignition-interlock program to those who had violated the “no alcohol” requirement of a restricted driver’s license, and SF 2362 and its House counterpart, HF 3435, which would have removed the obligation for Minnesotans to continue paying alimony to ex-spouses who had been cohabitating “with a non-related person of the opposite sex” for at least six months.

Meanwhile, SF 2478 and its companion bill, HF 2691, which would have required state and local jail and prison inmates to be housed in publicly (rather than privately) owned and operated jails and prisons, stalled after being referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Public Safety Policy and Oversight Committee, respectively.

After the legislative deadlines this week and next, there will be one more deadline this session: 5 p.m. March 29, when divisions of House and Senate finance committees must act favorably on omnibus appropriations bills.

Abbey Bryduck might want to get a little extra rest the weekend before.