Our service is very flexible, and can be adapted to handle a wide range of situations and contexts. This post will give advice and guidance if you are using BillTrack50 to ensure compliance, either for your business or for clients.
This post assumes you already know how to make bill sheets and enter query terms. If you need a refresher on those topics please see BillTrack50 - The Basics. Of course, we are always available to discuss your unique situation and help you decide on the best way forward. Please reach out anytime. We want you to be successful!
Searching by Statutes
If you are interested in possible amendments to specific statutes in specific states, then our keyword search function allows you to identify bills by the statutes they seek to amend rather than keywords.
For example, if you are interested in certain Arizona Title 15 statutes, you can search for different articles such as 15-119, 15-120.01, and so on. You shouldn't be too aggressive on wildcards, and if you have periods or dashes in your number, you need to put quotes around the search term. If you want 15-120.01 through 15-120.04, then the best thing is to put in the individual numbers as search terms surrounded by quotes and use an 'any of' search.
If you want to look for bills affecting all of Title 15 (15-101 to 15-2406), it is less practical to type out individual numbers. However, you really don't want to use the wildcard search "15-*" because you'll get way too many results. For it to work properly, you should have a letter or number before the asterisk.
You can use wildcards "15-10*" "15-11*" "15-12*" "15.13*" and so on. Depending on how popular these statutes are for legislators (currently returning 58 bills), you could tighten up your search by taking a hybrid approach combining wildcards and full sections.
For more details on searching by statute, see this post.
Progress and Bill Type Filters
The filters on the query tab will allow you to limit your search results to just the types of bills you're looking for. If you only need to know about new laws so you can follow them, you only need to worry about bills so leave out resolutions and memorials. It's a good idea to leave in "other" bills, too, just in case.
And you may only be interested in bills that have made good progress rather than following every bill that is introduced. So you can filter for bills that have crossed over into the second chamber, as they have a better chance of becoming law or bills that have already been enacted or veto overridden. A note of caution - bills can jump through more than one progress step in a day, and if you are limiting your progress types, this could impact the results in your bill sheet.
Depending on various factors, you may be interested in pairing the progress filters with the timeline feature. For example, you may wish to ensure compliance by reviewing all the signed/enacted laws over a period of years extending back beyond just the current legislative session.
See this post for more information on using the timeline to identify past enacted legislation of interest to your compliance needs.
For more information on using bill progress categories, see this post.
For more information on bill type definitions, see this post.
Regulation Tracking
If you track legislation to help with compliance, you will probably also want to follow any regulation changes. The regulatory code adds additional framework, often oversight, to the legislative language. Where the legislation is often broad-based and almost theoretical, regulations are more focused, rigid, and practical. Our regulation tracking service is constantly improving, and we are constantly adding additional functions. To check out our updates, visit the release notes on the Navigation Bar or sign up for our newsletter. Some top tips for regulation tracking:
- Don't rely on the standard template for the columns in your regulation sheet, create your own template where you can add in additional information and better follow the regulations through their journey. In addition to improving your compliance with the regulations, creating your own template can facilitate good workflow. Collaboration by providing space to notate input from other departments, or record when and to whom updates have been sent can be enhanced by leveraging a custom template. Read this post for an explanation of how to create the perfect regulation template.
- Remember that for regulation and bill sheets, the default sharing setting is that the sheet is private to the user who creates it. Keep this in mind when collaborating with your compliance team or gathering input across departments and roles. To refresh yourself on sharing, check out this post.
- Remember to set up daily email alerts for your regulation and bill sheets. See this video for instructions.
- Most regulatory changes have key indicators—tracking numbers, rule numbers, code sections, or titles. These indicators can be used in your regulation sheet query to ensure you continue to track the progress of the proposed regulatory changes you've identified as important.
- States might have 50 bills that impact a specific section of law in one session, yet (barring the low probability of one of those bills passing) the regulation might only open once every few years. So, broader searches are often better than narrow ones.
- Outside of BillTrack50, we recommend subscribing to state and agency-level email lists. You might only get an email every month or one or two a year, but if that agency regulates you, you are probably going to want to know potential changes as soon as possible. Agencies and boards often discuss regulatory changes in meetings before they ever appear in the register. Subscribing helps you get that advance notice that could make a difference and allows you to prepare for the new regulation well in advance.
Read this post for more regulation tracking tips.
Read this post for an introduction to our regulation tracking function.
And if your current subscription doesn't include regulation tracking, then contact us to get it added.
Reporting
Finally, ensuring compliance is all about spreading the word. Once you've successfully tracked the legislation and regulations important to your organization or your clients, we have several ways to let them know.
At the bottom of each bill and regulation sheet is a Report button. Clicking this allows you to configure and generate a PDF report of the bills in the bill sheet. Make sure you choose an appropriate template to display the important information, including your insights. You can then circulate your report to everybody who needs to know. Links to bills and regulations will be clickable, and people don't need a BillTrack50 account to see them.
To find out more about producing custom PDF reports, read this post.
For legislative reporting, you have another option in addition to the PDF. If you want something more interactive, then consider turning your bill sheet into a stakeholder page. You can them embed it into a web page or send a link to people. They will be able to filter and sort the stakeholder page like a bill sheet without having a user account. The beauty of utilizing the stakeholder page is that unlike a PDF, which is static to the time you export it, the stakeholder page information is kept current when the recipient clicks on the link.
For more information on creating and using stakeholder pages, see this post.