The heart of our site is our bill detail pages. There’s one for each bill introduced since 2011. You can access these bill pages whether or not you have an account. There are many ways you can come across a bill including through a registered free citizen account (where you can do a quick search), via a paid subscriber account (where you can quick search or do a query), or any number of other ways.
When you come across a bill, it’s as simple as clicking on the bill number to get to the detail page. Once you click on a bill, you are taken to the bill detail page where there are tabs organized to share relevant information.
The red underline shows which tab you are viewing.
Reading a bill
Let’s get started with a typical bill.
Summary
In addition to the bill’s name and number (read more about bill numbers here), the first thing you will notice on the page is the graphic across the top showing the status of the bill:
- Introduced: The bill has been introduced (or pre-filed) but not assigned to a committee yet.
- In Committee: The bill has been assigned to a committee but hasn’t left the originating chamber.
- Crossed Over: The bill passed a floor vote in the originating chamber and is now being considered in the other chamber (engrossed).
- Passed: The bill has been passed in identical form in both chambers (enrolled). The legislature is done with this bill.
- Signed/Enacted: The bill has been signed by the appropriate executive (governor, secretary of state, president) or the time period allowed for a veto has expired. The bill will go into effect on the date defined in the bill, or based on the rules of the state.
- Dead: The bill has not passed and cannot make further progress, usually because the legislative session it was introduced in has ended sine die.
- Vetoed: The bill was vetoed by the appropriate executive.
- Veto Override: The veto of the executive was overridden by the legislature. The bill will go into effect on the date defined in the bill, or based on the rules of the state.
Below the graphics, you’ll see the rest of the basic summary information about the bill including introduced session, bill summary, subjects (if available), sponsors, last action, and link to our source of data for the bill. You may also find a companion bill link included at the bottom of the summary page if this bill is related to any other bills in this session. The Bill Summary is either copied from the state website or parsed out of the bill text itself; the summaries are state data, not anything BillTrack50 has written. Finally, notice that the sponsor names are links; if you want to know more about the legislator you can click the link and go to our legislator page.
The URL to the bill will always remain the same, and anyone can click through to see the bill, so feel free to share the bill link. There is a count of how many people have looked at this bill page on our site, as well as social icons for Facebook and Twitter to facilitate easy sharing of the bill.
Bill Text
The Bill Text tab is where you go to read the actual text of the bill. These are formatted the same for every state. Whether you are logged in or not, you can use the bill version drop-down to see all the different amendments that have been introduced. By default, we show you the newest first.
If you aren’t logged in, you won’t see the highlight terms, compare version, or track bill options. To have the highlight terms checkbox appear, you need to have found the bill via a keyword query on a bill sheet. Regardless of how you search, once you are logged in, you can use the compare drop down to compare different versions of the bill – additions will be highlighted in green and deletions will be highlighted in red. The track button will allow you to add this bill to one of your bill sheets (if you have a subscription with us.)
Actions
The Actions screen shows all actions, as the state reported them, with the newest on top. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not.
Votes
The Votes tab shows the votes that have been reported on the state page. To see the breakdown of the vote by the individual legislators, select detail by the vote. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not.
Once you click detail, you will have a pop-up of the legislators who took votes on that bill. You’ll notice that you can click on the legislator’s name and be taken to their profile. You can also manipulate the legislator, party, and vote columns so that the results are organized by last name, party, or vote taken.
Documents
The Documents tab is a collection of links to the state page. We provide these links to make it convenient to review the bill and the official bill text on the state site. Depending on the state, we might be able to capture relevant additional information and links that can also be found on this tab. This information displays the same regardless of whether you are logged into an account or not.
