Understanding the Legislative Process – Stages, Stakeholders, and Policy Development
The Proposed Legislation
The selected legislation for this assignment is “The Healthy Foods Access Act,” which addresses the food deserts in urban areas such as Houston, Texas. The food deserts are areas where residents lack healthy and affordable food options secondary to a lack of grocery stores or markets within reasonable proximity to their residences. The selected act aims to lobby the establishment of grocery stores, markets, and other food sources around these communities. It also proposes funding for educational programs on nutrition and healthy eating habits.
The Current Stage of Approval
The proposal is at its initial legislation stage, where formulation is being done by the policymakers, stakeholders, and experts who collaborate to develop the content of the bill. They also discuss the structure of the bill together with the objectives when implemented. This stage involves the conduction of comprehensive research about the problem, gathering facts, analyzing existing policies, and consulting with community members to understand their needs and concerns. Among the experts involved are the advocacy groups (Congress.gov, 2020).
The Future Stages of the Bill
The bill is anticipated to follow the normal process a bill follows to be signed into law. The steps involved are problem identification and fact-finding—this is the current phase of the bill—the other stages are the legislation stage, committee review, markup, and amendments, vote in committee, floor debate and vote, passage and transmission, the conference committee, final passage, enrollment and transmittal to executive, and implementation stage. After the implementation of the law, other activities such as evaluation, analysis, and revision are done to ensure the effectiveness of the law to the community (Congress.gov, 2020).
Firstly, during the legislative phase, the bill undergoes introduction to the relevant legislative body, where language formulation takes place. Essential objectives here include gaining support from elected officials and establishing a committee to advance the bill’s enactment. Secondly, the bill undergoes committee scrutiny for assessment. These committees examine the bill’s merits and potential impacts, suggesting amendments as necessary. Collaboration with experts, stakeholders, and the public occurs to gather information, leading to refined proposals that incorporate input from these groups. In the third phase, the committee makes adjustments to language, provisions, and funding allocation to enhance effectiveness and address concerns raised during hearings. Fourthly, the bill undergoes committee polling to determine whether it progresses to the larger house or requires revision. The fifth stage involves floor debate, where lawmakers in the legislative body discuss merits, express opinions, and propose further amendments before voting following committee approval (Congress.gov, 2020).Top of Form
Once the majority of the votes cast in the legislative body are in favor of the bill, the bill is passed and transmitted to the other corresponding chamber in cases of the bicameral legislature like the Senate and the House of Representatives. In this stage, the legislative body does a committee review, floor debate, and a final vote. This stage is called the passage and transmission stage. Upon passing by the two chambers, a conference committee is formed to reconcile the differences and draft the harmonized version that is acceptable to the two houses. This stage is referred to as the conference committee. After the consensus of the two chambers, the harmonized version of the bill is voted for by the lawmakers and is considered passed by the legislative body in the final passage stage. In the next stage, the bill is enrolled with any amendments and transmitted for approval by the executive to become a law. This stage is the enrollment and transmittal to the executive.
Finally, the bill proceeds to the implementation phase, where the government agencies and the stakeholders work to enforce the provisions of the bill and strive to achieve its intended goals (Congress.gov, 2020. After the implementation, the effectiveness of the bill is assessed to ascertain whether the implementation of the bill is yielding the intended purpose. For instance, in this case, data concerning food access and consumption is collected, health change outcomes are measured, and feedback from the community stakeholders is collected. Preceding the revision stage is the analysis stage, where the impact of the policy is analyzed, and challenges of the success are identified through the conduction of cost-benefit analyses. The optimum goal is to optimize the policy efficacy. The final stage is the revision stage, where the bill undergoes revision to address any identified shortcomings or adapt to the evolving circumstances.
Main Stakeholders and Rationale
Various stakeholders play vital roles in each step of the legislation process. To begin with, the formulation stage is where key stakeholders include the policymakers, experts, and community members. Policymakers propose the initial design of the legislation based on the findings of their research and input from other stakeholders. Experts in the correspondent field provide knowledge and expertise on issues related to their expertise. For example, nutrition and public health expertise are applicable in this case. Also, the community members are key stakeholders in the formulation process; they ensure their proposals are considered in the solution design to ensure the holistic nature of the solutions (Porter et al., 2018).
Secondly, in the legislation stage, the key stakeholders include the elected officials and the advocacy groups. The involvement of the elected officials is justifiable because of their ability to introduce and advocate for the bill in the legislative body due to their political influence. On the other hand, advocacy groups seek support for the legislation through grassroots efforts and pushing for activities. Thirdly, government agencies and local businesses are key stakeholders. For instance, government agencies inspect the allocation of resources and enforce outlined regulations for the legislation process. Concerning this act, business persons also play a pivotal role in implementing this act due to their influence on food distribution in the community (Natalini & Di Mascio, 2022).
During the evaluation phase, researchers take on a pivotal role as primary stakeholders, gathering feedback from community members and conducting studies to assess the effects of implementing a bill into law. Policy analysts also fulfill their stakeholder responsibilities during the analysis stage, examining data and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of implementation, providing valuable insights for future decision-making. Various stakeholder coalitions work together to identify lessons learned and suggest adjustments to enhance the effectiveness of implementation. Lastly, as noted by Natalini and Di Mascio (2022), lawmakers, as stakeholders, participate in the revision stage by clarifying amendments to address any existing legislative shortcomings.
References
Congress.gov. (2020). The Legislative Process: Introduction and Referral of Bills (Video). [Video]. Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/legislative-process/introduction-and-referral-of-bills
Natalini, A., & Di Mascio, F. (2022). Public Management (Paradigms). In Springer eBooks (pp. 1082–1089). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44556-0_132
Porter, K. M. P., Rutkow, L., & McGinty, E. E. (2018). The importance of policy change for addressing public health problems. Public Health Reports, 133(1_suppl), 9S-14S. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354918788880
The policy cycle approach provides lawmakers with a pathway for developing a policy and guiding it through the institutions of our government. The cycle starts with the identification of a targeted problem and ultimately ends up with a specific course of action. Along the way, the outcomes of a policy are subjected to various levels of review, evaluation, and revision. In essence, the policy cycle consists of a series of interlocking steps that serve as a dialogue between the main stakeholders. As a health care administrator, it is important to have a working knowledge of the process within the cycle and how it leads to the implementation of health care laws that will eventually have an impact on what you do.
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Question
To prepare for this experience, visit GovTrack Health Bills and select a proposed piece of legislation that is relevant to your community and of interest to you. Research the topic and explain the policy process that your selected piece of legislation will go through to become a bill.

Understanding the Legislative Process – Stages, Stakeholders, and Policy Development
Assessment Deliverable
Develop a 700- to 1,050-word report that explains this process. In your report:
Summarize the proposed legislation.
Identify the stage of the approval process that this legislation is currently in.
Explain all future stages, including key components associated with each stage of the policy process.
Discuss formulation, legislation, implementation, evaluation, analysis, and revision of bills in the policy process.
Identify the main stakeholders and provide a rationale for selecting stakeholders at each stage of the policy process.