similar body under the provisions of its charter, or by the selectmen of a town acting under authority of a vote of the town at a town meeting duly called and held.
Joint Rule 7C provides that a petition for the incorporation of a town as a city or for representative form of government shall be referred to the next annual session, unless there is annexed thereto an affidavit of the town clerk and a majority of the selectmen, that the provisions of Article II of the amendments of the Constitution requiring the consent and on the application of a majority of the inhabitants of such town, present and voting thereon, at a meeting duly warned and holden for that purpose have been fulfilled.
Motions to suspend any of these rules go without question to the Committee on Rules, which must report adversely thereon unless the petitioners secure what in the opinion of the Committee is an equivalent of the requirements of law or rule.
The Reference of Bills to Committees
All bills and resolves, except "money bills" about which there is a special provision that they must originate in the House of Representatives,[1] annual and special reports and other requests for legislation, may start in either the House or the Senate; but reports or legislation based on them have to go sooner or later to both branches. They are first properly endorsed as to substance and entered on a docket by the clerks of the branch receiving them, and arranged neatly; then they are brought in by the clerks in a tin box to the Senate or House as the case may be, and handed to the President of the Senate or to the Speaker, who, after reading out the endorsement on the petitions and the titles of the various bills, refer them to whatever committee is deemed
- ↑ Joint Rule 4.
