For Immediate Release: February 10, 2022. 
 

Legislative Contacts:

Leo Priddy

Assistant Vice President

marketing@montgomerycc.org

Margaret Appleby

Legislative Intern

legislative@montgomerycc.org

Legislative Update Week Five: Helpful Terms to Know
 

If you’ve been following this blog as it tracked bills progressing through the Virginia legislature over the last couple of weeks, you may have seen some unfamiliar terms. Here are definitions of terms you may have seen in previous posts.

• Prefilled, ordered, and printed – A bills status when it is first available to the public for review. This is when groups that may have been missed during the drafting process can read and react.
• Engrossed – The bill has been “laminated,” and no further changes can be made. The bill and its amendments have passed the chamber in which it was introduced.
• Enrolled – This is the final version of the bill that has passed both houses.
• Block vote – Uncontested bills, those have been passed out of committee unanimously, are generally voted on in a group. The bills are read one by one, and, if a member has an issue with a particular bill, he or she can ask that it be pulled from the group and considered separately. Bills that are not included in a grouping are voted on one by one.
• Reconsideration – When a member wishes not to vote on a bill or to annul his or her previous vote, then the bill can be reconsidered to allow the member to absent and not have the vote appear on his or her record.

If a House or Senate committee wishes to “kill” a bill, it may employ one of the following strategies:

• Passed by indefinitely – A motion is brought to pass by indefinitely (kill the bill), and, if the majority of the committee votes “yes,” the bill is effectively dead. If the motion fails, a motion to report can still be brought.
• Passed by indefinitely with a letter - This allows the committee to reconsider the bill in another session. The bill requires more study and requires the chair of the committee to send it to the appropriate department or organization for further study. It is effectively a method to “politely” kill a bill.
• Tabled – Only House committees table bills.
• Stricken – This allows for a member to kill his or her own bill before the bill is ever heard.
• Left in committee – The bill is never brought up for discussion within the committee and no action is taken on it.
• Failed to report (defeated) – The motion brought to report a bill from committee is rejected.

In some cases, members introduce a bill for research purposes knowing that it will die, and the bill may be re-introduced in another session.

Make sure to utilize our color-coding system for our bill-tracking.

• Bills highlighted in green have been voted on and passed at least one chamber in the General Assembly.
• Bills highlighted in red are effectively "dead" and unlikely to see further legislative action this session.
• Finally, bills highlighted in yellow are likely to be voted on by either the House of Delegates, Senate, or both chambers in the immediate future.
• Here is a great time to contact your legislator to voice your support (or opposition) to that bill.
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This week, in lieu of listing three specific pieces of legislation, we encourage everyone to review the bill tracking sheet and to let us know if there is a piece of legislation we should be tracking. If so, reach out to legislative@montgomerycc.org. We ask that any recommended legislation fall within our 2022 Legislative Agenda (see link below).