must be signed by some citizen of the Commonwealth, and not necessarily by a legislator; but before being read in either legislative hall it must be endorsed on the outside as being presented by some member of the House or Senate. This does not mean that the member of the House or Senate advocates the passage of the bill, as it does in the case of a measure introduced on leave; it is merely an endorsement required by the rules of procedure in Massachusetts. I remember during one of the years when I was Speaker of the House of Representatives a petition was handed to the clerk for the impeachment of a certain Judge. The clerk brought it in his tin box to the desk and said that no representative had consented to present it for the petitioner; so the paper lay there day after day and as no member of the House was ever secured to attach his name to it, the measure was never introduced.
A third way of getting a bill before the Legislature is for a member to rise and move that a certain matter be taken from the files. This means that every year certain matters are "referred to the next annual session," and when in the following year a member rises and asks to have a measure taken from the files he refers to one of these. The motion is put and carried as a matter of course, as nobody ever raises an objection.
Any of these three methods, when used, must be initiated before five o'clock in the afternoon of the second Saturday of the session. Petitions or bills coming in after that time go under the rules to the next annual session.[1] This rule can be suspended only by a four-fifths vote of members of each branch present and voting, and where the petition is not accompanied by a bill or resolve embodying the legislation
- ↑ Joint Rules of the Senate and House of Representatives, Rule 12. These are also printed in the Manual for the General Court.
