Tuesday’s marathon General Assembly session was a result of it being “crossover,” the deadline for bills in either chamber to make it over to the opposite chamber. Any House bill that didn’t make it to the Senate (or vice versa) yesterday cannot become law. As a result, a great many bills fell victims to the time crunch. Though those bills are listed as “dead” on Richmond Sunlight, a peek at the detailed status listing will reveal that many were “Left in Appropriations,” or whatever committee didn’t finish with it in time. Those bills that did make the cut are listed as “Communicated to Senate” or “Communicated to House.”

It’s worth noting that crossover is a popular method of dispatching bills. When a committee wants to kill a bill, but doesn’t want to be blamed for doing so, they’ll simply fail to take action on it by the time crossover comes around. If they’re feeling extra sneaky, just a few days before crossover they’ll assign the bill to another committee…one that doesn’t meet before crossover.

In the few weeks left in the session, each chamber will consider the bills already passed by the opposite chamber. Often they’ll be amended somewhat, and so a team will have to match the two up and reconcile them, and then they get passed along to the governor for his signature. But we’ll talk about that next month.