As a quick reminder, to add columns to your bill sheet select "Bill Sheet Templates" or "Regulation Sheet Templates" from the account menu in the top left corner. Then simply edit the template you'd like to add your columns to, or create a whole new template to experiment with. More detailed instructions, including adding your own custom columns, available here.
Let's take a look at three of the columns that we've added recently.
1. Date Added to Bill Sheet or Regulation Sheet
The first column is the date the bill was added to the bill sheet or regulation sheet. This date can be useful to you in a number of ways. First, if you have a sheet that other people are adding bills to, for example your boss assigning you bills to review, you can now sort your sheet to see what bills (or regulations) have been added recently. Similarly if you have a group sheet where everyone in the organization adds priority bills you can use this date to see and review bills that have been added recently.
If you like to export bills and share them with others or in a newsletter you can use the "date added" as a filter to pull out and highlight bills that have been newly identified. Remember that when you export to Excel or PDF just the filtered data is saved out for you.
Another more subtle use for the added date is if you have a sheet that is built using keywords. Usually your date added date will match the created date (the date we added the bill to our database). But where those dates don't match you may have a bill that was amended (or gutted) and the new text is now relevant to you.
And finally you can set up a bill sheet based on your keywords that filters on a specific status, such as crossed over or passed. In that case the date added will be the date the bill crossed over or was passed or however you have set your filter. You can then make decisions or create reports based on that information.
2. Has Companion Flag
By companion we mean "bill that is related to your bill in some way". In some states, like Florida, Tennessee and Washington, bills are almost always introduced in tandem and they proceed along through their chamber on a parallel track. In those states the has companion column is not so useful. In some states, however, companion bills are common but not ubiquitous, in those states it is pretty important to know if your bill has a friend racing through the other chamber. For more information about which states use companions see this exhaustive post. If a bill does have a companion you can click through to the bill and a link to the companion will be at the bottom of the summary tab, where you can check the progress of the other bill too.
Of course it would be nice to know if the bill has a companion right in the grid, so that's what this new column is for. If a bill has a companion it is important to keep track of if either bill is moving.
A companion bill can also be a bill that is replacing, or being replaced by, your bill, like how things run in Massachusetts. This type of companion will also be flagged for you. And finally, especially for federal legislation, a companion bill can be a bill that is similar two your bill, which can include quite a long list of bills in some cases. Note that the type of companion is listed when you click the companion link highlighted in the above screen shot.
Remember you can add more columns to take notes on just what is going on with a specific bill. You can, for example, add a link column and link the companion bill right to your grid if you want.
3. Last Amended Date
Bills getting amended is a key part of the legislative process. Different states handle amendments differently. Some states offer a description of the intended amendment instead of producing a new version of the bill. When that happens we will put a red banner across the top of the bill text saying "potential newer amendment", add a note on the action tab that an amendment has been offered, and link to the amendment on the document tab. But most states simply post a new version of the bill. In that case we grab the new amendment for you and show it on the bill text tab, along with a version drop down so you can review older versions of the text at any time. All states will offer a new version of the bill text if/when a bill crosses over to the other chamber.
The Last Amended Date column will let you know the last time a new version of the bill was posted on the state legislature website. This date will align with your version alert, if you have version alerts set. You can use this column to identify bills that have been modified and may need a second review. Remember that you can compare two versions of a bill by using the "compare" drop down on the bill text tab when you are looking at a bill. This will highlight in red what text has been removed between bills, and highlight in green what text is new.
If you are worried about bills you've evaluated and hidden suddenly becoming relevant, either by being amended or by being completed gutted and replaced, then you might want to set up a bill sheet where you move all bills you hide (or ask me to set that copying to happen for you automatically). Then you can keep that bill sheet of hidden bills sorted with the newest amendments on the top, perhaps even turning on version alerts for this sheet, depending on how many hidden bills you have. As you get a chance to glance at the hidden bills that have been amended you can enter the last date you reviewed the bill into a custom column you create for that purpose. Annoying? Yes., admittedly. But you won't miss and sneaky re-purposed bills.
Hopefully these columns are useful. Let us know if you think of any other clever uses for them, we'd love to hear how you use them. And also please do suggest other columns you feel would be useful.
Cover Photo by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash