The 2011 Legislative Session ended Monday night without an agreement to solve the state’s $5.0 billion revenue shortfall and the legislature will not reconvene in regular session until January 24, 2012. That means there will need to be a special session to ensure the state has a balanced budget in place before the next biennium begins on July 1, 2011. House Research has a helpful issue brief that points out a few important factors that make special sessions different from regular sessions.
Only the governor can convene a special session, but only the legislature can end it. Under Minnesota’s constitution, the governor has the sole authority to call the legislature into a special session. However, once a special session has begun, the governor has no power to control what bills are considered or determine when the session will end. A special session could theoretically keep on going, running concurrently with the regular 2012 Legislative Session and ending only when a newly-elected legislature is convened in January 2013. In practice, however, the governor and legislature usually agree to consider a limited set of issues before a special session is called, and the legislature quickly adjourns once that business is completed.
All bills to be considered in a special session must be introduced during the special session. Usually, a bill introduced at the legislature is “alive” for the two years that a particular legislature meets (members of the House must stand for election every two years). For example, a bill that was introduced and began moving through the committee process during the 2011 Legislative Session could continue on to the House and Senate floor during the 2012 Legislative Session without needing to be reintroduced. However, each special session stands completely on its own and every piece of legislation to be considered must be introduced as a new bill.
To expedite the process, legislators normally vote to suspend rules during a special session. Special sessions are usually short, seldom lasting longer than a week. However, since each bill must be newly introduced, there are procedural hurdles that can potentially prolong the session. For example, the constitution requires that a bill be considered on three different days in each house, and legislative rules require that a bill be referred to a committee when it is introduced. Therefore, it is common for legislators to speed up the process by declaring an “urgency” and suspending these rules with a two-thirds vote in each body.
-Christina Wessel
