The Iowa Legislative Process is one of the most important times for lawmakers, but citizens might not understand how it works . Iowa Representative Joe Mitchell outlined how a bill becomes a law during the legislative session, “For starters, how you pass a bill into a law is a legislative request. If you wanted to change the speed limit on 218 from 65 mph to 60, I can submit that bill into the chief courts office, which would then go to the speakers office where they would sign that bill to probably the transportation committee. And so then say that bill passes the transportation committee, the chair of the transportation committee decides they want to do a sub-committee on that bill. A sub-committee generally has three members on it, two members of the majority party, one member of the minority party. It has to have 203 votes to pass to go back to the standing committee, which has about 20 members, about 11 from the majority and 9 from the minority. Then it would have to pass the standing committee, go back to the speakers office, and then the speaker would decide if they want to bring it on to the floor for a vote or not, which then it needs 51 votes to become law.”

As confusing as the process may seem, every bill introduced during the legislative session will go through this process. Some will make it all the way to the floor and not get the required 51 votes. Joe Mitchell and other senators and representatives will be at the Washington County Courthouse to hear concerns and comments from the public in a legislative briefing February 15th.