Who Controls the Clock: The Hidden Politics of Scheduling Power in State Legislatures

• In Event: State-Level Politics and Policy Change

Abstract

Under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, powers not expressly granted to Congress are reserved for the states. Historically, state legislatures in the United States have focused on regional issues such as infrastructure, education, and public lands. However, in recent years state legislatures have increasingly engaged in traditionally federal domains - such as immigration, food regulations, public health mandates, and more. This shift underscores the need for research into the state legislative processes to better understand how internal processes shape legislative outcomes.  Specifically, the often overlooked power to schedule a bill for floor consideration, a critical stage which determines if a bill lives or dies. This research asks: How do calendaring structures affect the likelihood, speed, and success of bill outcomes in the U.S. state legislatures? This paper examines how different bill calendaring structures – specifically, formal calendars committees, rules committees, and leadership-controlled models – affect legislative flow in both Republican and Democrat-controlled state chambers.

This analysis examines data on House bills advancing through key committees from the previous two legislative sessions in six states: Texas, Florida, Arizona (Republican-led); and California, Illinois, and Colorado (Democrat-led). These states were selected based on variation in calendaring structures, population size, and legislative professionalism. The time between bill introduction to floor consideration and passage was tracked and evaluated utilizing state databases and Open States to ensure standardization amongst the sample. This analysis employs descriptive statistics and inferential techniques (e.g., ANOVA and linear regression) to determine the impact of calendaring models on bill delays, advancement rates, and passage outcomes.

Preliminary data collection is underway, and early findings suggest that leadership-controlled calendaring structures may result in faster movement for majority-priority bills, but there may be greater bottlenecks for other legislation. These trends suggest calendaring structures may play an important role in shaping state legislative outputs. The findings have the potential to inform debates around procedural reform and legislative transparency in state governments, aligning with the APPAM 2025 theme of forging collaborative, transformative policy solutions at the state level.

Author

• Taylor A Calvin, Southern Methodist University
  Presenting Author