Senate and House members return to session on January 6 to swear in new members and to formally begin the 2015-16 legislative session.

Gov.-Elect Wolf and Lt. Gov.-Elect Stack will sworn in on January 20, which is the first real session voting day on the legislative schedule at this point.

While the main order of the day will be parties, the Senate and House are expected to name Committee Chairs and possibly members, although that may take longer.

January 6 will also be the first day bills are introduced and receive numbers, although members have been circulating co-sponsor memos for their legislation since the beginning of December.

It will be interesting to see which bills receive the coveted Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 1 numbers because they many times signal those issues that are a priority for the new session.  If past history is any guide, being first doesn’t always mean the bill gets to the Governor’s desk.

At the opening of the 2013-14 session, Senate Bill 1 (Rafferty-R-Montgomery) proposed a transportation improvement funding package and never got to the Governor’s desk.  House Bill 1060 (Pyle-R-Armstrong) was signed into law in 2013 as the funding package.

Interestingly, there was no House Bill 1 in the 2013-14 session.

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1/5/2015