Panel considers new Rule 11-7 to allow ‘enrolled’ versions of heavily amended bills

The Rules & Procedure Committee discussed a proposed new Senate Rule 11-7 on Thursday that would allow the Senate, by affirmative vote, to request an enrolled version of a bill when amendments make the text “no longer reasonably be understood.”

Director (Legislative Service Office) described the change as a response to requests from the technology and process committee and management counsel. “This is what we colloquially refer to as enrolling a bill,” the director said, explaining that the document would track amendments into a single version but would not be the official bill without a full Senate vote.

Staff members emphasized that producing an enrolled version during session is labor intensive and could create floor confusion because page and line numbers in an enrolled document would not match the official bill’s line numbering. The director said LSO would generally push back on individual member requests to produce such versions during session because of the workload, and that the president could request it if leadership deemed it necessary.

Senator Rothfuss and other members noted the measure is intended to be a high-bar process. On how to quantify a “heavily amended” bill, the director said the standard adopted by tech and process is that the bill “could no longer reasonably be understood.” The committee discussed that the Senate would still need to vote to authorize the drafting of an enrolled version to commit staff time.

No formal motion or vote on adopting Rule 11-7 was recorded during the meeting. Committee members said they would continue to weigh staff capacity and floor risks before deciding whether to sponsor the rule change for floor consideration.