The Journey of the Health Youth Act—School House Rock style

Thanks to Youtube, everyone can experience the joy that is School House Rock’s “I’m just a bill”… no matter when they went to school! While the video is pretty dated (where are the women?) and School House Rock deals entirely with federal rather than state level politics, there is still a lot we can learn from the overall content. Let’s face it, lawmaking hasn’t changed that much in 30 years!

So here it is: The journey thus far of The Healthy Youth Act– our real, live bill. Watch the video and then read on see how we’ve faired every step of the way.

An Idea becomes a Bill: The idea of creating a two-track system for sex education in schools and giving a parents a choice between a newly created comprehensive sex education class and the current only available option of abstinence until marriage was not new and not ours. This system has been in place in New Hanover County for a decade! Some smart, courageous legislators (called “primary sponsors”) decided that, to quote SHR, “there should be a law.” So they picked up the sex ed mantle and created an official Bill called the Healthy Youth Act.

Committee Hearings: School House Rock pretty much gets this part right. Committee hearings can drag on forever (although usually with significantly less yelling) and many bills will never get a favorable vote and will “die” in committee. The Healthy Youth Act was one of the lucky ones, but its committee journey wasn’t easy! It wasn’t heard just one time in committee, but FOUR separate times in three different committees on the House side ALONE. (Education, Health Committee– twice, and Education Appropriations for those of you keeping track at home.) Fortunately, the Health Youth Act got four House-side hearings and four favorable reports. But we were nowhere close to finished…

House Floor: After being thoroughly vetted through committee (most bills only have 1-2 hearings before moving to the Floor) it was time for the Healthy Youth Act to be hit the House Floor for all 120 member of the NC House to vote on it. There have to be not one, but two separate votes from the House Floor. After 90 minutes of debate on the Floor, we had our first favorable vote: 64-53. We’d picked up two Republican votes but lost a few conservative Democrats. Still, a comfortable margin. The next day we were back for the final House Floor vote. This time it went 62-52, still with bipartisan support. We made it out of the House but were only halfway there!

Senate Committee: The Senate doesn’t have “serial referrals” to committee (meaning bills don’t move between one committee to another to another before a Floor vote) so we had one hearing in Senate Mental Health and Youth Services committee. The vote was favorable so it was on to the Senate Floor.

… Or was it? Before the Healthy Youth Act made it on the Senate Floor it was referred back to the Senate committee it had just come out of!

But School House Rock made it sound so easy! Actually, this isn’t entirely unusual. Some Senators thought that there were ways that they could make the Healthy Youth Act better and stronger by “amending” the bill to make those changes.

So that’s where we are now! Once the details get hammered out back in the Senate Mental Health committee, the Healthy Youth Act will make its official debut on the Senate Floor before all 50 NC Senators for the first of two votes. Assuming both votes are favorable (drumroll please….)

I’ll bet you thought I was going to say that the bill would be a law!

Not so! Because the Senate will have changed the bill (remember that part about amendments in committee?) from the version the House passed, it will have to go BACK to the House for a vote of “concurrence.”

Basically the House can vote to agree with the changes the Senate made or they can hammer out a compromise with the Senate in what’s called “conference committee.” (You’ve heard the quote about laws and sausages right?)

Assuming concurrence or conference committee happen successfully…

Off to the Governor’s desk: Just as federal laws have to get the President’s sign-off, so too do state laws need the Governor’s approval. Fortunately, Governor Bev Perdue is supportive of this legislation so, if we can get it to her desk, we have good reason to think that The Healthy Youth Act can become a law!

How we hope, and we pray, that it will, but today, it is still just a bill, just a bill…

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