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Hundreds of bills are authored every year, but a little more than 1 out of 5 pieces of legislation became a law in the 2019 legislative session.

All bills start with an idea. A legislator decides to sponsor it, and then the draft is written — with research and technical help from the Legislative Services Agency. The agency, funded by the General Assembly, is a nonpartisan service that provides legal and fiscal expertise to legislators: help drafting bills, maintaining the Indiana Code, determining the fiscal impact of new legislation, and staffing committees.

At this point, the bill has been authored by either a state representative or a state senator, and that determines which chamber of the legislature the measure starts in.

The chamber and political party of that author has a huge impact on whether or not your bill becomes law.