The original item was published from March 1, 2021 9:32 AM to March 10, 2021 9:40 AM
This is the third installment in a series of blog posts highlighting resources that are helpful for following the Kansas Legislature.
This Friday (March 5) is “turnaround” day which is the half-way point of the 2021 legislative session. This deadline means that all House bills need to be sent to the Senate and all Senate bills need to be sent to the House by end of day on Friday.
However, there are exceptions to this deadline: bills sponsored by or acted upon by certain committees are exempt from this rule. In statehouse lingo, that’s called being “blessed” and this process can keep a bill alive longer. You can see the list of exempt committees and read more about Joint Rule 4 at the
Joint Rules portion of the Legislature's website.
Almost all action this week will be on the floor of the House or Senate. Committee hearings and legislative proceedings are live-streamed from the Legislature’s website. To view live streams of floor action and archived videos of past action, go to the main page of the
Legislature's website, hover over “Audio/Video” in the upper right corner, then click on House, Senate & Committee Video from the drop-down menu. To view the schedule of proceedings, choose “Statehouse Live & Archive”.
Daily House and Senate Calendars are the best tools to see the list of bills that will be worked that day. In both chambers, the bills will appear under either General Orders or Final Action. In the House, it will be those bills above “the line” and in the Senate, the bills listed before “anticipated end of debate calendar”.
As mentioned in last week’s blog, the
Legislative Procedure in Kansas manual can be a great help in deciphering what is going on. However, you can always contact the State Library through
kslib.info/ask with any further questions.
State Library of Kansas Reference
Phone number: 785-296-2149
Legislative Hotline: 1-800-432-3919
E-mail:
infodesk@ks.gov