Indiana General Assembly

The Indiana General Assembly is made up of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Indiana has a part-time legislature that does not meet year-round. The General Assembly convenes on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in January. During odd-numbered years the legislature meets for 61 days (not necessarily consecutively) and must be adjourned by April 30. During even-numbered years the legislature meets for 30 days (not necessarily consecutively) and must be adjourned by March 15. The General Assembly may not adjourn for more than three days without a resolution approving adjournment being passed in both houses. The governor has the authority to call on the General Assembly to convene a special session if legislators are unable to complete necessary work within the time allotted by the regular sessions. The districting is maintained to comply with the United States Supreme Court ruling in Reynolds v. Sims. The Indiana Senate and House of Representatives each has several committees charged with overseeing certain areas of the state. Committees vary in size, from three to eleven members. The committees are chaired by senior members of the majority party. Senators and representatives can be members of multiple committees. Most legislation begins within the committees who have responsibility for the area that the bill will affect. Once approved by a committee, a bill can be entered into the agenda for debate and vote in the full chamber. Although not common, bills can be voted on by the full house without going through the committee process. Indiana legislators make a base annual salary of $33,032, plus $196 for each day in session or at a committee hearing and $62 in expense pay every other day. Terms and qualifications Article 4, Section 7, of the Indiana Constitution states the qualifications to become a Senator or Representative. The candidate must have been a U.S. citizen for a minimum of two years prior to his candidacy and must have been resident of the district that he seeks to represent for one year. Senators must be at least twenty-five years of age and representatives must be twenty-one when sworn into office. The candidate cannot hold any other public office in the state or federal government during their term. The candidate must also be a registered voter within the district they seek to represent. Article 4, Section 3, of the state constitution places several limitations on the size and composition of the General Assembly. The Senate can contain no more than fifty members, and the senators serve for a term of four years. The House of Representatives can contain no more than one hundred members, and the representatives serve terms of two years. There is no limit to how many terms a state senator or representative may serve. Bills passed by a supermajority automatically become law without requiring the signature of the governor. Once the bill is made law, it can be challenged in the state courts which may rule the law to be unconstitutional, effectively repealing the law. The General Assembly could then override the court's decision by amending the state constitution to include the law. Each law passed by the General Assembly must be applied uniformly to the entire state; the General Assembly has no authority to create legislation that targets only a particular community. Indiana Senate The Indiana Senate consists of 50 members elected to four-year terms. Micah Beckwith, the Lieutenant Governor of Indiana, presides over the Senate while it is in session and casts the deciding vote in the event of a tie. The Senate President Pro Tempore is Senator Rodric D. Bray of Martinsville. The 2025-26 Senate has a Republican super-majority, with Republicans holding 40 out of 50 seats. The Senate offices are located in the west wing of the second floor of the Indiana Statehouse, and the Senate chambers are on the west wing of the third floor. Indiana House of Representatives The Indiana House of Representatives consists of 100 members elected to two-year terms. The House of Representatives has a Republican majority of 70 seats, while the Democrats have 30 seats. The House offices are located in the east wing of the second floor of the Indiana Statehouse and the House chambers are on the third floor. ==History==

1816 Constitution in downtown Corydon Indiana's first constitution was ratified on June 10, 1816, and the election of the first General Assembly took place on August 5 of that year. They convened in the original three-room statehouse located in Corydon. The body consisted of ten senators and twenty-nine representatives, sixteen of whom had been signers of the Indiana state constitution. There, the General Assembly began its development into the institution it is today. The original constitution provided that representatives served terms of one year and senators served terms of three years, and permitted an annual meeting of the assembly from December until March. In the 1830s, the Whigs split from the Democratic-Republicans in response to national policies. The Whigs held a strong majority in the General Assembly in that decade. In 1843, the remnants of the old slavery party had strengthened into the Democratic Party and swept into power, the Whigs never regained their majority and the Democrats maintained power until the middle of the American Civil War. In 1836 the General Assembly passed the Mammoth Internal Improvement Act and set plans into motion to modernize the state's infrastructure. The wilderness of northern and central Indiana was slowly developed as the General Assembly approved the construction of roads, canals, railroads, and numerous other infrastructure projects. This led the state to near bankruptcy in the late 1830s, but it was avoided when the General Assembly spun off the failing canals, and half of their debts, to private companies in 1841. The failure of the projects was the main factor in the Whig's loss of power. The state constitution had come under considerable criticism beginning in the 1840s because it allowed most government positions to be filled by appointment. The problem with this method of filling positions did not manifest itself until the advent of the state's political parties. Once in power, a party could stack the government with its own members, making it difficult for the minority to regain power. Another problem was that the authority for many trivial issues was not delegated to other authorities. For example, if a man was to divorce his wife, the divorce bill had to be approved by the General Assembly before being allowed to legally remarry. 1851 Constitution In 1851, a new state constitution was created and ratified. Among the constitution's new clauses was an extension of the terms of representatives to two years and senators to four years. It also made many of the previously appointed positions open to public election. The new constitution delegated many minor tasks to newly created elected offices. With its workload considerably decreased, instead of meeting annually, the General Assembly only convened a session every two years. The new constitution also placed new limits on the General Assembly's power to create local laws, the General Assembly having become notorious for creating state-level laws that were only applied to one town or county. The new constitution led to the gradual erosion of the Democratic majority. In 1854, the Republican Party was established and drew in many of the former Whigs. That year the General Assembly was split with no party attaining a majority. The Democrats held the largest number of seats, but the Whigs and Republicans caucused to form a majority and control the assembly. The result was a deadlock on most issues because Republicans and Whigs could not agree on most major issues. By 1858, the Whigs were almost completely disempowered and the Republicans gained enough seats to become the largest party, but not enough to form a majority on their own. That year Governor Ashbel P. Willard called the first special session of the General Assembly because they had been unable to pass an appropriations bill. Democrats regained a small majority by gaining the votes of the disaffected Whigs in the 1860 election. During the 1860s and the American Civil War, the legislature was the scene of intense debate. At the beginning of the war, the General Assembly was controlled by the southern sympathetic Democrats. Governor Oliver Morton and the Republican minority were able to prevent the General Assembly from meeting in 1862 and 1863 by denying the body quorum. In 1919, Indiana suffragists petitioned Governor James Goodrich to convene a special session of the Indiana General Assembly to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Indiana ratified the 19th Amendment January 16, 1920. In 1921, Julia Nelson was the first woman elected to the Indiana General Assembly. Scandal erupted in 1925 when it was discovered that the Indiana Branch of the Ku Klux Klan controlled over half the seats in the General Assembly. During the session, Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson said "I am the law in Indiana". During the next two years, the federal government intervened, Stephenson was convicted of murder. After the governor refused to pardon him, Stephenson indicted his co-conspirators, leading to many of the state government being charged with various crimes and removing much of the Klan's power. In the 1930s, the General Assembly established the state's first general welfare programs to help the poor affected by the Great Depression. The General Assembly passed the nation's first DUI laws in 1939, establishing a blood alcohol level of .15 as the legal limit. The 1940s led to the first African American being elected to the Indiana Senate and legislation that desegregated the public schools in 1949. ==See also==