At BillTrack50, we are invested in continuous improvement in service to our customers. In each month's newsletter (join our email list here), we announce new features, fixes, and new data availability. These new feature updates will be listed here as well. If you are a current user who needs help with your account, contact us here.
October / November 2024:
New Payment Options
Along with changes to pricing, we've added some new ways to pay. You can choose to pay your subscription monthly rather than in one annual payment. All subscriptions continue to be on an annual basis. We have also introduced the ability to set your subscription to auto renew from one year to the next. This is optional and turned off by default - you will need to actively switch it on. You can deactivate auto renew at any time.
Product bundling
To simplify the payment structure, we now include legislator scorecards, mobile stakeholder pages, and the advanced user management tools from our former enterprise tier in all legislation tracking subscriptions as standard.
Regulations
We have added New Jersey regulations to our service. We now have regulations from all 50 states and federal.
June / July 2024:
New State Stats Charts
We've added two new charts to the state stats pages for all states: Bills Per Committee Categories (how many bills have been sent to committees in each category in the current session) and Passed Bills per Committee Category (showing annual pass rates for each category of committees since 2011).
See this post for more details.
Regulations
We've now added some regulations for Georgia. The only state for which we have no regulations is New Jersey.
AI Assist: Recommended Bills and Upgrades
We've added a new Similar button at the bottom of bill sheets. Clicking on this button will generate a new tab with 100 bills that are similar to the bills in your bill sheet. The bills sort by relevance and a new score column shows how confident the AI is in the match - above 75 is a good match. The list will not contain bills from your main bill sheet or the hidden tab and will only include states selected in your main query. See this post for main details.
AI generated bill summaries and similar bills on bill pages are now available for all bills going back to 2017.
We added a link to the bill summaries on bill pages to report any poor summaries.
Finally, we have re-generated bill summaries using Anthropic's Claude which provides significantly more accurate summaries, better capable of describing the actual changes made to existing laws.
May 2024:
API Data Dictionary
The API documentation has been updated to include recently added elements. In addition, a data dictionary has been incorporated to define the terms used.
Committee Category in State Stats
The State Stats pages now include two new graphs - bills per committee category for the current or most recent session and passed bills per committee category showing trends over time. See this post for more details.
Bill type column
We've added a new type of column for use in bill sheets - Bill Type. This will show if the legislation is a bill, resolution, memorial or other type.
April 2024:
AI Assist: Discover similar bills
Bill pages for bills introduced in 2024 sessions now include an additional Similar Bills tab. Clicking on this tab will generate 100 similar bills, matched using an AI tool. The tab displays the bills in a bill sheet-style interface and the bills can be added to existing bill sheets by clicking on the +. See this post for more details.
AI Assist: AI generated bill summaries
We have now generated summaries for all bills, including the very long and very short bills, in 2024 sessions. Summaries have also been added as a possible bill sheet column and are available in the API. Any new account created from April 2024 onwards will have the AI Summary column as part of the Default Standard bill sheet template instead of the state summary.
Committee category filter
Committee categories can now be used to filter a bill sheet to just bills that have been sent to a committee in a category or categories. The single committee filter option can still be used by selecting it from the drop down menu on the Query tab of the bill sheet. Read more about how to use the new filter in this help post.
March 2024:
AI Assist: AI generated bill summaries
The summary tab of bill sheets now includes a short, simple summary of the bill generated by an AI tool. This does not include resolutions, memorials or very long and very short bills. We will shortly make summaries available as a column on bill sheets and in the API. Read more about it in this help post.
Committee categories
We have replaced the 'Subject List' section of the bill page summary tab with a new 'Committee Category' section. This category is derived from an analysis of the committees that the bill has been sent to. If you have the Subject column in a bill sheet it will automatically change to the committee category. The change has also been implemented in the API.
Non-legislator sponsors
Sometimes bills are sponsored by the governor, or a committee, rather than individual legislators. We've now added these non-legislator sponsors to the bill summary page and the sponsor column on bill sheets.
Improvements to legislator names
Some legislator names include accents. We've made improvements so that when you search for a legislator, it will find them whether you search using the correct accented letter or not. So searching for 'Pena' will find 'Peña'. We have also amended the names of some legislators to make sure they include the correct accent.
Change to default states on Query tab
When you create a new bill sheet and are taken to the Query tab, the state selection will now default to your subscription. So if you have a single state subscription for Oklahoma, that state will be automatically selected. If you have an unlimited subscription, all states, Congress and DC will be selected.
Additions to Congressional legislators
We have now added the 'at large' congressional representatives from the US territories of Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The votes of these legislators will now show correctly in scorecards.
API additions
Ballotpedia links (for legislator election details) and Follow the Money links (for legislator campaign financing) are now available in the API.
February 2024:
Sorting Added Bills
We've changed the way added bills sort. Now, if you've added bills manually so they appear at the bottom of the Query tab, they'll now sort first by state and then by bill number. This should make it easier to find specific bills if you have a lot of added bills.
January 2024:
Improvements to Scorecards
We've fixed a bug where the sponsor and cosponsor scores were not displaying correctly on the scorecard legislator page.
The drop down menu to assign a category to a bill now tells you how many bills are already in that category.
Improvements to the bill sheet Documents tab
The names of documents in the Documents tab are now more descriptive, particularly especially for fiscal notes and bill analysis.
Improvements to sorting
We've changed the way the Position column sorts in bill sheets. If you click on the column, it will now sort from 'Strong Support' to 'Strong Oppose' rather than alphabetically. Any bills where you have not entered a position will come at the bottom.
In the Event Schedule, bills that have hearings in the same committee will be grouped. Bills for which there is no hearing time will move to the bottom.
State budget information added to State Stats
We've added a link to the relevant state budget from NASBO, the National Association of State Budget Officers, to each state's State Stats page.
Tracking Pennsylvania Amendments
Pennsylvania publishes proposed amendments to bills as separate documents. We've now added these so they will appear in the documents tab of your bill sheets. To track proposed amendments, select the Documents box on the Alerts tab of your bill sheet. You will then get a daily email alerting you when amendments are proposed. To see the amendments, click the link in the Documents tab.
December 2023:
Major Update to Votes for Scorecards
We now split out 'other' votes into 'absent' and 'abstain'. This change is reflected in the vote breakdown on bills and also on scorecards. It is now possible to assign different weighting to absent and abstain votes. See this post for details of how weighting works for missed votes.
Tracking Virginia Budget Amendments
It's difficult for us to track all the amendments to budget bills in Virginia because the state website puts them all on separate webpages. So we've now introduced a new feature where all the amendments will be listed in the Documents tab on the BT50 bill page. This video explains how to use the feature to track the amendments.
November 2023:
Custom Report Builder
This new tool allows you to customize and export a report of your bill tracking in a PDF format, for sharing with a client or your manager or perhaps a press release or to help an allied organization. It works for both regulations and bills. See this blog post for more details.
September 2023:
New legislator data and committee links
First and foremost, we've started updating our legislator data daily. We've also added some new information to our legislator pages, with a little more data on the committee tab and a whole new History tab. We've also added a committee tab to the bill pages with links to all the committees a bill has been referred to, as well as a tab on the committee showing all bills referred to that committee this session. See a quick summary of both the legislator and committee improvements in this 2 min video. It is also time to start thinking about getting your account ready for 2023. Webinar schedule here.
July/August 2023:
New Admin Tool and new choice for coloring regs maps
We added a new tool for the company admin to be able to see all users and all permissions, which is available from the account menu. See it in action in this video. We also added a new option for color coding a regs map based on how recent the latest activity is in each state. And finally we made it easier to access your bills and use other links when you don't have an active session -- now when you finish entering your name and password we will go ahead and take you where you had wanted to go. As a reminder, checking the "remember me" box will keep your session active for 90 days.
June 2023:
New Hidden Bill Tab
This month brings the last of our tools to help you track hidden bills that get amended with the new hidden bill tab. The new tab also offers some new housekeeping features. See this video for details. We also got the map back onto the public stakeholder page and improved the export from the bill quick search.
May 2023:
New Amended hidden bill alert
In February we added our first tool for identifying if bills you've hidden have been subsequently amended. Now we have a second approach, using a new type of account alert. See this post for details. We've also improved some error handling and corrected an issue that locked users out for entering the wrong password after one bad guess.
April 2023:
New Export Option
We have added a csv option for all of our excel exports -- bill sheets, reg sheets, vote records, scorecard bill score. We are now automatically removing commas from searches to make it more plain how the system works.
March 2023:
New Home Page, handling hidden bills that get amended, speed improvements
We have a whole new look for our home page, plus two new pages for press and testimonials, let us know what you think. We've added "last amended" date to the list of bills you've hidden on a bill sheet, allowing you to quickly see if any bills have been amended since you hid them. We have also made big improvements to how the bill sheets pages load, speeding up accounts with 100s of bill sheets noticeably.
February 2023:
Scorecard scoring on Primary vs Cosponsor, New API calls
You can now score the primary sponsor and the cosponsors differently in you scorecards. If you have an existing scorecard we updated the cosponsor score to be the same as the sponsor score for now. Also our State Stats sheets have been a big hit and we've added some of the state stats data to the API, by popular demand.
January 2023:
Changes to how "near" queries work, New Columns for Bill Sheets (and Regs Sheets)
Most importantly we altered bill sheet and regulation sheet queries for all active customer sheets to remove phrases in near searches, which were keeping those sheets from working. Please review your sheets if you use the "near" option in your queries. We added new columns for you to choose from to Bill and Regs Sheets, Date added to bill sheet, Date added to regs sheet, Has companion flag, Last amended date. More info on these columns and what they mean here. We made a small improvement, by customer request, to include the total bill count on map widgets. We fixed a problem with alerts sending new bill alerts along with new vote alerts when only new vote alerts were requested. We fixed myriad issues processing and parsing bills because of changes the states made to their website or bill format. We have also released a new app in the app store called RepTrack with lots of census and other information for all current legislators.
December 2022: Hourly Data
We have increased our data updates to hourly. Please keep in mind we are still depending on the state websites, so your mileage may vary. We have created a new map coloring option called "Indicator Map". This map let's you choose a color for states that have bills, and a second color for states that don't. We fixed some other issues with maps, did some work on the keyword column for bill sheets, as well as a problem that happened in certain cases sending stakeholder page alerts. We have also released a new app in the app store called CensusTrack to look up census data for any address.
October - November 2022: Afternoon Alerts!
We are excited to announce our newest product, just in time for the new sessions: Afternoon Alerts. To make this option available on your alert tab you push purchase an Afternoon Alerts subscription (reach out if you need help) for $500. Then you can choose to get a second email in the afternoon with any new bills or activity you've decided you'd like to know about. Read more here. We also added new rulemaking resources to our state stats pages, open any state and scroll down to the links section at the bottom to see this new information. We have the new district maps loaded so 2023 scorecards will have the 2023 district boundaries (older scorecards will still have older boundaries). We made some small fixes to maps and improvements to our error messages. Finally, we added census data for each legislator's district to the BillTrack50 iOS and Android apps -- read more here.
September 2022: Data refreshes every four hours
We are now updating data on the website every four hours. Bill pages and bill sheets will show the most current status, action, vote, etc info automatically. We are still only updating bill sheets with new bills overnight; if you want to update your bill sheet in the meantime simply open your bill sheet, go to the query tab, and click save. This will cause the bill sheet to run your query and capture any new bills.
June - August 2022: Customer Requests and behind the scenes Speed Improvements
We added the bill progress to bill list widgets to make them easier for the public to understand. We updated the Bill Score tab of scorecards to be more consistent with 0 meaning missed vote, and blank meaning the person didn't have the opportunity to vote (they are in the other chamber or not on that committee). We added a new graphic to the state stats pages showing what percentage of bills sponsored by Democrats, Republicans, and both passed each year. We added an option to the Event Schedule screen, at the top under the date range, to show past events. We improved the API responses for states with unusual district names, like NH and VT. We added a map button to the general bill search screen, underneath the grid, so everyone, including free users, can see the distribution of bills across the country. We added an export button to legislator detail pages to export all votes the legislator has taken, including enough context to understand the votes. Look for the button underneath the grid on the vote tab on any individual legislator page.
Most importantly we have been working hard on speed improvements across the system to allow us to update legislative data on the website more often. Our goal is to update data update frequency to every 4 hours in September, with possible further improvements by the end of the year. We are currently looking for customer feedback on if additional email alert runs would be helpful, and if so, what would be the best timing. Please let us know your thoughts.
April - May 2022: New Scorecard Scoring Option and State Stats Features
We added a new scorecard option to give you more control over how to handle scoring when a legislator misses a vote. Full details here. We also added a new feature to the State Stats pages, a link to view all bills that have at least crossed over in each chamber for the current (or most recent) session. We fixed a bug that was causing unreliable highlighting when reading regulations. We removed the names of sponsors who have changed their mind about sponsoring a bill. And finally we filled in some missing non-votes in West Virginia, cleaned up some 2011-2022 Federal data issues, and improved some older sponsorship info in Connecticut. Many thanks to everyone who took the time to let us know about suspected data issues!
March 2022: Error handling improvements, new scorecard features, new state stats display
First and foremost two new improved error handling and reporting items. First, if you've ever found your bill sheet missing data you are sure you entered, the problem was with your permissions or possibly with your internet connection. We have a full explanation of how BillTrack50 deals with your entered data some new visual cues to make sure you know when you aren't connected and saving properly. Second, if you've ever had a bill sheet not update with new bills you may have run afoul of another issue: there is a maximum number of rows allowed on your bill sheets and regulation sheets. We do publish alerts to let you know when your sheets get too big but we've now also added a badge to the navigation bar to make sure you notice those important system alerts. Read more about the symptoms and solutions to both problems here. Finally, a small item, when you enter the wrong password too many times the message will now tell you how long you have to wait to try again (spoiler: counts down starting at one hour).
We also have a couple of small upgrades. First, for scorecards, we have made individual legislator scorecards more printer friendly, so now you can save them as a printable pdf (or actually print them if you really want to). Also there’s now an option to not include missed votes in the denominator of your score. That option is available on the manage tab. We've also added a new display to the state stats showing how many bills from each party pass each year. And finally we've made some tweaks to the map widget to make it look a little nicer. The map will now have states that weren't included in your query grayed out with crosshatch; states that are included in the query and simply have no results still show as white.
February 2022: New Small Features - Refresh Button, Multiselect Drop Down, Email Address update
We have added a few new useful features and functions. First you can synch data for a specific bill from one bill sheet to other bill sheets by using the + to bring up a list of bill sheets, and then the refresh button to update all the data on that bill on a different sheet. See how here. We have added a "multi select" data type for use on templates. We have added a way for you to update your email address. Start from Manage Account, edit your address, and then you'll need to click the link in the verification email. Your address is not actually changed until you click that verification link. Finally we have made some minor improvements to functionality and fixed one bug. The delete button for stakeholder pages is now a true delete instead of hide. We increased the contrast on our bill sheets, regulation sheets, and bill detail pages to make them more accessible. We added more information to the lockout message when you type the wrong password too many times. We changed the default rows on bill widgets to 50 which we think will be more suitable for most users. And finally we fixed a bug with sorting user columns that were data type number.
January 2022: New App Features, Searchable Blog, Self Registration and more
We have added a whole bunch of new features to our app, including some paid premium features that will let you send out calls to action. Read more here. The search box is finally back on our blog, and more powerful than ever. We've finished our work on the new user self registration tool, see those details here. Minor updates this month include improving the event schedule alert email, adding links to bills in the calendar feed, having the print export of bill sheets respect the sorting and filter set on the bill sheet, adding links to IssueVoter on relevant federal bills, and making the viewing area for regulations responsive.
December 2021: New State Pages and Custom User Registration Screen
We have published a series of pages, one for each state, with basic information such as the current session dates, as well as a statistical summary of the current session's legislation, some charts of trends over time, and a list of useful links for each state. You can access the pages from the your navigation bar, or access them here. We also have a new tool to help you if you are managing an account for an organization that will have many users signing up to use BillTrack50. You can now have us create a custom registration page where users will be automatically added to your account as long as their email matches a pattern you define. More information on this tool coming in January.
November 2021: New Home Screen, Blog Improvements
We have a new home screen when you first log in, highlighting ways to get help, connect with us, and accomplish your tasks. The alerts screen still shows your bill sheet alerts, but now also includes system alerts (like maintenance warnings) and account alerts (like you have a bill sheet over 7500 bills). We've also upgraded the look of our blog and added category filters to help you find the content you are looking for. And finally, we added the time zone to the times listed in the Event Schedule, to avoid any confusion.
October 2021: Calendar Feed
We are very pleased to announce a significant new feature: a calendar feed so you can add bill hearings to your own Gmail/Outlook/Apple calendar. Learn how here or watch our 2 minute video. As part of making the calendar feed work we also needed to add a "preferences" tab to the account management screen. In addition to the event schedule settings there are also some grid options to help BillTrack50 be more compatible with screen reader software like JAWS. We anticipate adding several more preference options in the coming months. You may also notice a slight change to the look of the alerts home screen; we'll say more on that in November when all features are ready.
September 2021: New Twitter Tab, Copy Template Button
Based on popular demand we have added a twitter tab to our legislator pages. Where we have a twitter handle, which is upwards of 80% of the time, you can now see a legislator’s last 10 tweets right from BillTrack50. There’s also a new button to make a copy of a template. You might have a template you have made for yourself and you’d like to make a stakeholder page that’s similar but maybe minus a few columns, now that’s easy. Open your main template and you’ll see the “copy” button at the top.
August 2021: Position Maps, API Update
As summer starts to fade we’ve been working on a few smaller improvements. First, and most fun, is our new position map. If you have a position column in your bill sheet you can now make a map showing the average position of each state. Read about it here or watch our 1 minute video. We’ve also made query improvements to regulation sheets to bring them in line with how bill sheets work. Finally, by popular demand, we added Events to our API so you can create your own bill hearing widget (documentation here, search for “/events”).
July 2021: Rollup Bill Sheets
We are pleased to announce our second major upgrade for the summer, a new roll up bill sheet option. You can now bring several bill sheets together into one sheet, and use the new combined sheets for sharing, alerts, widgets, stakeholder pages, etc. Read more about this new feature here or watch the tutorial video here. We will be holding a series of webinars to cover both the new expanded query capability and the roll up bill sheets in August and September, please register to join us for whichever session is most convenient. We’ve also further improved the help options in the navigation panel, particularly the FAQ section.
June 2021: Expanded Search Capabilities
As always, when things get quiet for the summer we turn our attention to working on the on new features you’ve asked for during the session. Our first big announcement is a huge improvement to the flexibility of our bill sheets: expanded query capability allowing for searches like (marijuana or marihuana or cannab*) and (license or dispensary or “social equity”). All of your current queries will continue to work, but now you can make them more elaborate if you need to. Read all about the new expanded query options here or watch a quick tutorial here.
We are also working on making our help system more extensive and easier to access where and when you actually need help. You can see the beginning of our efforts with new “release notes” and FAQ options in the help section of the navigation panel, a new getting started post for free users, and extensive (ongoing) cleanup and reorganization of our YouTube channel. Of course we’re still on hand to help whenever you need extra TLC.
May 2021: Committee Search
We have a new search option we are excited to share with you. In the quick search section of the navigation panel, you’ll notice there is now a Committee Search. You can use this new search to look at the list of committees in a given state, or to check how many states have a committee dedicated to Covid-19, for example, or, of course, to look up the details about any specific committee. The new committee display shows general contact info and links, the members of the committee, lists of any subcommittees, and provides info about staff (example). We’ll be adding more data to the Committee page over the next couple of months.
As usual, we have some small improvements to let you know about too. We have added archiving to regulation sheets, the map icon is back on stakeholder pages, and there are lots of export buttons on scorecards now.
April 2021: Copy Comments Checkbox Removed and new Bill/Regulation Alert Email
When you copy bills between bill sheets you will now always copy your comments with the bill too. So the “copy comments” check box is gone from the manage bills dialog box. We added the companion type to the companion bill pop-up. Also, we trust you enjoyed the facelift to your email alerts.
March 2021: Event Schedule Email Improvements
We have a new hearing alert option (visit your bill sheet alert tab), and state links have been added as a column you can add to both bill and regulation sheets. New this month is a small regulation sheet upgrade, adding archive and copy. You can now copy and paste within the grid. We’ve made a few improvements to the Event Schedule email alert, and shortly you’ll start seeing improved Bill and Regulation alert emails. Plus the usual bug fixes and small user improvement requests especially around sorting and filtering. We’ve also improved the free trial and subscription renewal process to be a little more intuitive. There’s never been a better time to subscribe! 🙂
February 2021: Event Schedule Email, Logo Management, and New State Links Column Option for Bill Sheets
We have some new and returning features to announce. First, logos are back, with a new logo manager (video tutorial). We’ve also added a new column option for your bill sheet and regulation sheet templates: state link. So now you can add the “official” link to your bill sheets and stakeholder pages. Third, we added a filter on the user management pages. If you have a lot of sheets to manage, this new filter will really help you when you are assigning user permissions. And last but definitely not least, we have a whole new alert option: Event Alerts. Starting Monday you will be able to ask for a separate email listing the bill hearings coming up for you in the next 7 days (subject, of course, to the schedules being available on the state legislature website). You can set this alert from the alert tab of your bill sheet(s).
January 2021: Latest Action Added to Email Alerts
All major features we planned to add for 2021 are now released and we’ve switched to making small improvements based on customer feedback. Our latest new feature is the latest actions in your email alerts. Hopefully, that’s been helpful as the year gets started and you’ve been getting more alerts. We made the bill progress graphic slightly snazzier, added the ability to change the company administrator from the manage users screen, and added the ability to copy and paste from inside the bill sheet and reg sheet grid. We also put several items back that you were used to using: the copy data checkbox when plussing bills, the map button under the bill sheet and reg sheet grid, and the check box on the manage user screen to resend an invitation email. Finally, for our visually impaired users, we are beta testing a new mode that is more compatible with screen readers, reach out if you’d like to try that out.
December 2020: Filtering by Committee Option for Bill Sheets
Our final major new feature is ready: filtering by committee. Read about all of the new query features here. For highlights of new tools and features announced earlier in the summer see this round-up. Check out our New Query options blog post here.
November 2020: Scorecard Comments on Individual Votes
We are happy to announce our penultimate improvements, this time to our scorecards. We’ve added the ability to comment on individual votes, which is especially handy for Federal scorecards, as well as color coding for the votes on individual legislator scorecards. For a rundown of all the improvements see this post or for a more thorough exploration see this video walking through setting up a scorecard from scratch using all the new tools. Oh and some late-breaking news, you can now set which columns you want to be pinned in your template.
October 2020: Group Management and Enterprise Level Subscriptions
The final phase of our summer updates has finally been released: group management. If you have lots of users and/or lots of bill sheets you might find this new feature really handy. You can create a group of users and items (bill sheets, scorecards, etc). Then when you add a new user to that group they get permission to all the appropriate items, and when you add an item to the group all the right people will see it. If that sounds like it will make your life easier let us know and we’ll give you a tour and go from there.
Also, if you are a visual scorecard fan, you should definitely see the amazing upgrades Revive has been doing, including multi-year scorecards (example). Notice when you click through to a voting record you have several years across the top, and the year score and overall score.
September 2020: New Regulatory Tracking Coverage: Vermont and Alaska and new Regulation Map Widget
I have been very gratified by all your kind feedback about the new BillTrack50 changes. We have a few updates yet to come, but nothing that will be as startling. If you missed our launch announcement see this post for highlights of our new features, with links to dig into the features that matter the most to you.
Our biggest announcement this month is that we’ve added two more states to our regulatory coverage, VT and AK. That leaves just NJ, MD, GA, and HI uncovered. We also added a new Regulation Map widget, which works much like the Bill Map widget, so check that out if you’ve been wanting to share regulations on your website.
August 2020: The New BillTrack50
I am so happy to announce the new BillTrack50, which launched over the weekend. A few highlights: Longer sessions (90 DAYS long), a bigger grid with lots of new features, and new user management allowing all users to make their own private bill sheets. For highlights see this post which links to detailed info on each of the major new features or see our new YouTube playlist to see an overview or to dig into the features that matter the most to you.
Cover Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash