On June 3, the Maine House defeated LD 144, the bill that would have reduced the number of state representatives from 151 to 131. UPDATE: because the Senate had passed this bill on June 2, the bill could still conceivably pass. See this story in the June 4 Kennebec Journal, which says that even though the bill has been defeated twice in the House, there will probably be a third vote.
You already posted something about this passing. How can it pass and then fail?
I have trouble understanding the rules of the Maine legislature. They pass things conditionally, apparently, and then even if it passes the first time, it needs another vote. Maybe someone from Maine can help us out here. I got the information from the Maine legislature’s web page.
Many legislative bodies, especially city and county, require two or three readings of a bill.
At each reading, a majority must approve. Only at the last reading does approval make a bill into law.
However, I have never heard of a state legislature having such a procedure.
It strikes me, though, as a darn good idea, one that might prevent rushing into a foolish action, which, alas, is the usual kind of action governmental bodies take.
#2 http://www.maine.gov/legis/lawlib/billpath.htm
Expand item #8. In Maine there are apparently two steps to final passage. One is “engrossment’ which is the folding of all amendments into a single text. And the second is “enactment” by which a bill is finally agreed to by both houses.
Subject committees in Maine are joint committees. It appears what the Senate was considering on LD 144, was not the version that the House had engrossed; but rather the committee report.
The committee majority report (9 members) was that the resolution “ought not to pass”, while the committee minority report (4 members) was that the resolution “ought to pass as amended”. The original resolution would have reduced the House to 115 members, the committee amendment would reduce the House to 131 members.
The House formally rejected the majority report, and then adopted the minority report, and then further amended the amendment. The original version would have had effect from the 2012 elections, following reapportionment in 2011. The amended version would have effect from the 2014 elections (Maine is the only State with even-year elections that does not reapportion before the the “xxx2” election and the floor amendment would maintain that schedule.
The Senate accepted the minority committee report and then folded in the floor amendment made in the House. That is why it doesn’t appear that it was actually working on the version engrossed by the House, but rather acting in a manner that would result in concurrent engrossment of the bill.
So it appears that Maine has a procedure that is more a case of parallel concurrency, executed serially; as opposed to a more conventional procedure of serial concurrency, where the 2nd chamber begins with the legislation passed by the 1st chamber.
What is somewhat interesting is that the original approval by the House did not require a 2/3 majority (this is noted in the roll call vote). It also appears that a roll call vote is not required, even for constitutional amendments (there is another amendment that was approved without any roll call votes).
Note, that in Texas (and possibly in other States), a bill that passes a 2nd chamber is sent back to the 1st chamber, before being sent off to the governor. Presumably, this permits the 1st chamber to validate that the legislation is in identical form. When legislation was either handwritten or typewritten, and the two chambers were run as independent fiefdoms, this may have been more than a formality.
Here is an article about the last action:
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/6426297.html
It says it failed on a 89:54 vote, 7 votes short of the necessary 2/3 supermajority, but 3 votes more than the original vote.