January 29, 2010

The 2010 legislative session opens February 3 and will close May 5. As in all even-numbered years, this session is a "short session." Under the rules this means that the Legislature meets for three months rather than five and that only bills related to "budgetary" and "fiscal" matters or committee bills may be considered. In practice, this means that the Legislature attempts to conduct the same amount of business in three-fifths the time and that the definitions of "budgetary" and "fiscal" are limited only by the imagination.

This is the first edition of Shipman & Goodwin's 2010 Environment, Energy and Land Use Group Legislative Update; it provides a list of Committee Chairs and important session deadlines for Committees that have cognizance of matters that typically relate to the environment, energy, and land use.

The next edition of the Update will provide a list of pending environment, energy, and land use related bills. The list will draw mainly, but not exclusively, on bills originating in one of the following four committees of interest: (1) Environment; (2) Planning and Development; (3) Transportation; and (4) Energy and Technology. The purpose of the Update is to provide a list of bills that is concise enough to be reviewed at a glance while also providing an easy method to access additional information regarding the specific bills that are of interest to you.

The Chairs of the four Committees of interest are listed in Table 1:

Table 1: 2010 House and Senate Chairs

A complete list of Committee members and contact information is available on each Committee's webpage.

Proposed legislation may be introduced by individual legislators ("proposed bills") or by Committee ("committee bills" or "raised bills"). The deadline for individual legislators to introduce proposed bills is February 5. The deadlines to introduce committee bills or raised bills vary by Committee as shown in Table 2 below. Table 2 also contains the deadline for public hearings and joint favorable reports:

Table 2:  2010 Important Committee Deadlines*

Publication Type

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