Louisiana State Legislature

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The Louisiana State Legislature is the state legislature of Louisiana. It is a bicameral body, comprising the lower house, the Louisiana House of Representatives, and the upper house, the Louisiana Senate.

The legislature meets in Louisiana's state capital, Baton Rouge.

The powers and privileges of the legislature are laid out in Article III of the Constitution of Louisiana.

General regular sessions are held in even-numbered years. Restricted regular sessions are held in odd-numbered years. The constitution also allows for extraordinary or special sessions, emergency sessions, veto sessions and the organizational sessions which occur every four years when members take office for a regular term.

Section 3 of Article III says that the number of members of each chamber of each chamber of the legislature is set by state law, which means the number of senators and representatives can be changed over time, but in no case can there be more than 39 senators or 105 representatives.

The boundaries of legislative districts must be re-drawn every ten years in order to maintain proportional representation in each of the districts. Re-apportionment must take place by the end of the year following the year in which the state's population is reported to the president of the United States for each decennial federal census. The next such re-apportionment must take place before December 31, 2011.

Senate

The Louisiana Senate is the upper house of the state legislature of Louisiana. The current make-up is 23 Democrats, 16 Republicans.

House of Representatives

The Louisiana House of Representatives is the lower house in the Louisiana State Legislature. The House is composed of 105 Representatives, each of whom represents approximately 42,500 people (2000 figures). Members serve four-year terms with a term limit of three terms (twelve years). The House is one of the five state legislative lower houses that has a four-year term, as opposed to the more common two-year term.

Leadership of the House

The Speaker of the House presides over the House of Representatives. The Speaker is elected by the full House. In addition to presiding over the body, the Speaker is also the chief leadership position, and controls the flow of legislation and committee assignments. The House of Representatives also elects a Speaker pro tempore to preside in the absence of the Speaker.

Current make-up

The current make-up of the House is 51 Democrats, 50 Republicans, 3 Independents, and 1 vacancy.

Joint Legislative Committees

• Joint Legislative Budget Committee, Louisiana State Legislature
• Joint Legislative Capital Outlay Committee, Louisiana State Legislature

External links

• Louisiana State Legislature
• Louisiana House of Representatives
• Wikipedia: Louisiana State Legislature
• The Institution of the Louisiana Legislature
• Louisiana Senate

References

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