On our home page we have a heat map of bills introduced in each state for 2011-2012, which is updated every night. It looks like this:
Which is interesting. Hawaii for example, has a surprisingly high number of bills. As does Texas, when you factor in that they only meet every other year, as opposed to the full time legislature of California. The next obvious question is, how many of these bills get passed? You might expect that to be related to how many bills get introduced, and for the two maps to be similar. But no:
First of all, there is a lot more color on this map, meaning the states are more similar in the number of bills they pass. Bills introduced ranges from a low of 652 in Wyoming, to a high of 18,397 in New York. Quite a range. Bills passed range from a low of 142 in Ohio (if you don’t count the abysmal 120 of the US Congress) to a high of 1582 in Texas. Indeed most states fall between 200 and 800 bills passed.
So if there is a wide disparity in how many bills get introduced, but a much narrower range in bills passed, the percentage passed would be interesting to look at:
What’s particularly interesting is that the highest areas are all grouped together in the Rocky Mountain West, excepting a couple states. NY, PA, NJ, MA all come in at well under 10% ND, ID, NV, CO are around 50% and UT, WY, MT about 40%. Why? Is it a cultural difference? Something else? What do you think?
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 is a user friendly free service that provides legislation research in all 50 states and federally. BillTrack50 also offers legislation and regulation tracking across the nation with tools to help organization stay on top of changes (bill sheets and alerts) and share legislation they are tracking with key stakeholders (legislator scorecards, widgets and stakeholder pages). If you are interested in learning more about how BillTrack50 saves organizations time and money, sign up for a demo and try it out BillTrack50 Pro for a month, for free.