By Chloe White, TheStatehouseFile.com
Yesterday (Thursday, 2/19) was the crossover deadline for bills to be passed in their respective houses and sent to the other chamber for consideration. Legislators spent the week under pressure to sift through legislation, determining which bills would move forward and which would be shelved until next year.
According to StateScape, “a ‘crossover’ deadline is the last day for a bill to pass out of the chamber in which it was introduced and move forward for consideration in the opposite chamber.” Any bills that had not received their third reading before Thursday were dismissed for this session but will be eligible to be submitted again in 2026.
Aaron Dusso, associate professor of political science at Indiana University Indianapolis, shared his insights on crossover week and its purpose in an interview with TheStatehouseFile.com.
“The purpose of it is to keep some order in the process and not have any late-arriving bills that can be given enough time to consider beforehand.
“Every year, every session, whether it’s the long or short, there’s always certain bills that are thought to be more important ones,” said Dusso, pointing to issues like abortion and marijuana as key examples.
Many bills have been stagnant since the beginning of the session—unsurprisingly, as there were over 2,000 bills written by Indiana lawmakers.
Laura Wilson, a political science professor at the University of Indianapolis, discussed the process of bills passing through committee.
“The committee chairs have a large say in terms of what we’re going to hear and the order in which we’re going to hear it. They are able to prioritize what they think is most important,” said Wilson.
Additionally, she spoke of the misconceptions many people might have about the legislative process.
“There will be bills that never make it to committee, and there’s some that get there and that’s as far as they go,” she said.
“The national average is that legislators across state legislatures author between 12 and 14 bills a legislative session, and there’s no way that legislation could be thoughtfully deliberated, edited and then passed into law. The reality is, most bills don’t become laws, counter to what we might assume to be true, and in fact, the ones that do are rare.”
Chloe White is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
