Why do Rhode Island Senate bills say "Adopted" when they've not gone to the House or the Governor?

To answer this question, you have to be able to understand and identify the different types of measures Rhode Island uses in their legislature. Rhode Island has both regular bills and resolution type measures. What differentiates them from other states is they don't use separate legislative type designations to differentiate between bills and resolutions. Because of this, their simple resolutions (Senate Resolution or House Resolution) use S or H as the legislative type, instead of SR or HR(as you might see in other states). In order to see if it is a resolution, you have to click into the text to see what type of measure it is.

The reason this is so important is the headline question in this article is how these bills show as adopted even though they haven't been signed by the governor. Simple Resolutions only need to be passed by the chamber that introduced it in order to be adopted. In other words, no Governor signature is necessary! Joint Resolutions and Concurrent Resolutions are the same way, most states us SJR or SCR (for Senate Joint Resolutions or Senate Concurrent Resolutions), but in Rhode Island, they simply use the legislative S or H for all of their resolutions.