The Senate Rules Committee discussed a proposed rule to allow the production of an "enrolled" bill that incorporates amendments when a bill has become too heavily amended to be reasonably understood.

LSO staff described the proposed Senate Rule 11-7 as a mechanism for creating a version of a bill that tracks all amendments when the text becomes too difficult to follow. The director said LSO has historically produced such versions for use at conference committee and that doing it earlier in the process is "extremely rare." He said the proposed rule would require the full Senate to vote to authorize producing the enrolled version.

Committee members debated how to define "heavily amended." LSO reported the threshold agreed in tech and process was whether the bill "could no longer reasonably be understood." The director and senators warned that easier access to enrolled versions could consume substantial staff time and create confusion because page and line numbers in an enrolled document would not match official line numbers used for further amendments.

Senator Rothfuss and others said the rule aims to set a high barrier and put the decision in the Senate's hands. The director said LSO would typically refuse such a request from an individual member but would consider producing an enrolled version if the president of the Senate requested it and the full Senate authorized the production.

No formal vote was taken on adopting Rule 11-7 at the meeting; committee members treated the discussion as informational in preparation for future action.