Number Of Bills Introduced By ND Lawmakers Looks To Be About The Same As Last Session

I’ve posted previously about what looked to be a big decline in the number of bills introduced in the 2015 legislative session, but I may have gotten ahead of myself.

The deadline for House members to introduce bills has come and gone. Today is the deadline for Senators to introduce bills. After today, all new bills must go through the delayed bills committee, and relatively few do.

So based on bills introduced today (I’m not counting resolutions) the 2015 legislature is down just slightly from 2013 in the number of bills they’ll be considering. Once the stragglers get filed today, we’ll probably be at about the same number.

There were 842 bills introduced in 2013. So far in 2015 we’re at 808, which is a little more than a 4 percent decline.

The trend for legislation since the 1980’s has been downward, but redistricting in 1990 reduced the number of lawmakers in the chamber. After that decline, the number of bills introduced has been pretty even outside of a big spike in 2009.

What remains interesting is the decline in the number of lobbyists registered for the session.

The number of bills may not be down, but uncertainty over oil prices seems to have driven away the number of lobbyists and organizations interested in North Dakota’s lawmakers.