A special session lasts thirty days, and it’s called by the governor.
Technically, lawmakers in the House and Senate could call the legislature into a special session with a two-thirds vote. It’d be sort of hard to do that when the legislature isn’t in session, and as a practical matter, governors simply do it.
Special sessions are typically called to pass a state budget, which needs to be done before June 30, because the state’s fiscal year starts July 1.
What happens to all the bills that haven’t passed and hit the governor’s desk?
They go back to the house of origin – if a bill started in the House and made it to the Senate, but hadn’t passed the senate, it goes back to the House, but not to square one. Every bill stays at the highest point it reached in the House or Senate.
Here are two examples:
(1) A bill that passed the Senate would go back to Rules and be ready to hit the Senate floor for a vote, and if it passed, that bill would head right over to the House.
(2) If a bill passed a policy committee but affected the budget somehow and needed to go to a budget committee, it would be sent back to that budget committee.
How can citizens learn more about legislation and issues?
You can learn a lot from the Bill Information website, which lets you look up any piece of legislation, see what bills passed the House or Senate or every piece of legislation sponsored by a lawmaker.
An entirely different option is a report on the 2013 session (so far) by the non-partisan policy staff, who wrote a great report about major legislation that passed the legislature.
They organized it by committee, with an index in the back by topic. It’s a more natural way to look up issues you’re interested in, such as education.
Both tools are good. The bill information website lets you focus on individual bills or committees, while the session report gives a great overview about the big issues.