As you hopefully know, we have lots of great columns for you to pick and choose from so you can show the exact information you need in your bill sheet. To see what’s available simply go to the Manage Bill Templates option in the account menu, and edit one of your templates.
If you haven’t visited the template screen in a little while you might notice there’s a new option to add sorting to your template.
One other general note, if data (like the bill name or bill summary) is too long to fit and it ends in “…” you can click on the row to expand it, and then click on the row again to contract it.
We just added columns for Created and SponsorCount to the template, earlier this summer we added VoteCount. This seems like a great time to run down the whole list of columns and explain what they are and how/when you might use them.
StateCode
Postal abbreviation of the state where the bill was introduced, or US for federal bills. You’ll want to include this column unless you are searching in just one state. In that case, you can decide to include the state code or not for aesthetic and space reasons.
StateBillID
The official Bill Number assigned by the legislature, like HB101 or HR2013 (more details). You’ll nearly always want to include this column as it also serves as the link to the bill.
IntroducedSession
The session the bill was introduced in. If you are searching just for current bills you don’t really need this column unless you’d like to make it clear which sessions are two-year sessions. States that have session names with a year, like “2017 General Assembly”, will generally not be able to consider the bill in question in the following year (the secret two-year session state exceptions are HI, NH, OK, WV, WY). States with session name like “2017-2018 Regular Session” will continue to be able to consider a bill introduced in the first year of the session in the second year of the session. All states with names without a year, like “86th General Assembly” or “115th Congress” have two-year sessions. (For more than you ever wanted to know on this topic, see this post.)
If you are searching across years (which we recently made easier), you will want to include the introduced session.
ShortBillName
The Bill Name is how the legislature has listed the bill on their website. You will almost certainly want to include this information on your bill sheet.
BillSummary
Some states (and Congress) give us something nice we can show you as the summary for the bills. Sometimes we can retrieve the summary as part of the metadata describing the bill. Sometimes we can scoop the summary out of the bill text itself. Unfortunately, sometimes we don’t have a good summary and simply provide you the most descriptive bill name we can get as the summary. If you think there is a summary available in a state in general we have missed, either on the website or in the bill text, please let us know and we will work on it. Depending on which state you are working within, and how good their summaries are, you may or may not want to include the summary on your bill sheet. Note these summaries are not written to us but are exclusively information from the legislatures themselves.
SubjectList
Occasionally we have a list of subjects covered in the bill which is provided to us by the State or Congress. When we have this data we will show it to you. Again this is information provided by the legislatures themselves, not our opinion about the bills. The depending on which states you are tracking the Subject List can or cannot be useful.
KeywordList
Unlike the Subject List, the Keyword List is extra information not provided by the legislatures. Instead, it is generated by IBM Watson. The keywords are the most important words in the bill and generally do a pretty good job telling you what a bill is about. There are several ways to use the keywords either to help you write your query or to help you evaluate bills. You may or may not find the keyword column useful for your own use, but you likely won’t want to include this column on public-facing bill sheets or stakeholder pages.
LastActionDescription
The Last Action is the most recent bill status on the legislature website describing the bill. As such the language can be quite technical and can provide excellent detail about the current status of a bill. You will almost certainly want it on your sheet so you can stay up to date on what’s going on with your bill. That said, for public-facing sheets, depending on the sophistication of your audience, you might prefer to use the Bill Progress column (described below).
LastActionDate
The Last Action Date is the date the Last Action occurred. You will likely want to include this date whether you are showing the Last Action or the Bill Progress.
SponsorCount
We recently added the count of sponsors and cosponsors to our Bill Detail pages, to help you quickly ascertain how much support a bill has garnered. We decided to allow you to also add this information to your bill sheet so you can sort on it and otherwise use it to inform your research. This column will be most useful if you are searching just one state or just Congress.
SponsorList
The Sponsor List is simply a list of all of the sponsors and cosponsors for a bill. When a bill is sponsored by a committee or otherwise doesn’t have a legislator associated with it, the sponsor list will be blank. Note, sponsors are listed first and have an * next to their names, followed by an alphabetized list of cosponsors on our Bill Detail pages.
BillProgress
Unlike Last Action, Bill Progress is BillTrack50’s interpretation of where a bill stands in the legislative process. Although the process can be very complicated, we have simplified it to just a few steps: Introduced, In Committee (which means assigned it has been assigned to a committee, not necessarily that it has been scheduled to be heard), Crossed Over (which means it has passed out of the chamber where it was introduced, and is likely in the other chamber though it might be back depending on the shenanigan level associated with the particular bill),
- Introduced In Committee (which means assigned it has been assigned to a committee, not necessarily that it has been scheduled to be heard), Crossed Over (which means it has passed out of the chamber where it was introduced, and is likely in the other chamber though it might be back depending on the shenanigan level associated with the particular bill),
- In Committee — it has been assigned to a committee, but it has not necessarily been scheduled to be heard Crossed Over (which means it has passed out of the chamber where it was introduced and is likely in the other chamber though it might be back depending on the shenanigan level associated with the particular bill),
- Crossed Over — passed out of the chamber where it was introduced, and is likely in the other chamber though it might be back depending on the shenanigan level associated with the particular bill. (Engrossed)
- Passed — both chambers have passed the bill and the bill is awaiting signature by the Governor/President, or in the case of a resolution other approval as appropriate. (Enrolled)
- Signed — signed by the Governor/President, or in the case of a resolution other approval as appropriate. We do our best to update bills as signed, but we are relying on the state legislature website to update their information, so if the distinction between Passed and Signed is important to you (like you are deciding if you want to call a Governor) it is a good idea to do further research to double check the status of the bill.
- Dead / Failed / Vetoed — A few states tell us when a bill has been officially designated dead, and can no longer move through the process. In those cases, we will mark the bill dead at that point. Otherwise, we mark bills dead a few days after the session they were introduced in has ended, keeping in mind states with two-year sessions. If a bill is vetoed or not signed by the Governor / President we will also put the bill in this category if that information is made available on the legislature website.
The Bill Progress column includes the numbers 1-6 included above to help you with sorting and filtering (click on a column title to sort, click on the magnifying glass icon under the bill sheet to filter).
The Bill Progress also matches up to the graphic on our Bill Detail pages.
ActionCount
The Action Count is the number of actions that have taken place for the bill, and gives you an indication of if the bill is making progress through the legislative process. Different states have different typical actions, so this column is most useful in single state sheets.
VersionCount
The Version Count is the number of versions of the bill available – the number of amendments that have been accepted and published. Like action count, it can be a way to gauge if a bill has legs.
ReadCount
The Read Count is how many people have clicked on this bill in BillTrack50. Read Count gives an idea of how much attention a bill has been getting from the general public. This column measures social bling, and is mostly meant for fun.
TrackedCount
The Tracked Count is how many BillTrack50 bill sheets contain this bill. Tracked Count gives an idea of much attention a bill has been getting from other professionals. This count, of course, is influenced heavily by the types of organizations that are using BillTrack50. This column is also meant mostly for entertainment purposes.
VoteCount
The Vote Count is how many votes we have on record for this bill. The Vote Count gives an idea if the bill is making progress in the legislative process. However, we only have committee votes where the legislature publishes them (full 2017 list here), so keep that in mind if you compare vote counts between states (also we have no votes at all for HI or KY). The vote count column can be useful to have visible when you are populating a scorecard.
PositionColumn
The Position Column is the only standard column we include that is meant to be filled in by you. To fill it in simply double-click on the cell you want to fill in and a pop up will appear with your choices for the position. The position column can be used to color code your widget, or pre-populate your scorecard with ratings. When sharing your sheet with others, you will need to give your users at least “comment” level permission for them to be able to enter position information.
Created
Created is the date a bill was added to our database. When our processes are running smoothly the created date will be the evening of the day the bill was introduced, or early in the morning the next day. If something has gone awry then all bets are off, but the information will hopefully still be useful to you. We have exposed this created date for you so that you can sort on it to see bills that have been added to the database since last time you had a chance to work on your bill sheet. To sort on a column click on the label of the column, and click a second time to sort the other direction.
That’s it for our standard columns. You can also include as many of your own custom columns as you need. Details on how to do that here.
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.