Along with all the other changes to BillTrack50 this year, we’ve added some new query options you might find useful. Let’s just work our way down the query tab and discuss the new (and new-ish) features in order, which you can review in this video or in the post below:
1) New State Selection Drop Down
Instead of a box listing all of the choices you’ve made we now offer this simplified drop down list where you can more easily manage which states you would like to include. You have to choose at least one item from this list to get any results. To search for federal bills choose “United States” and for the DC City Council choose “Washington DC”.
Important Note: For items 6 and 7 to work we need to know what states you want to work with. So when you first create your sheet you will need to save your state selection and come back before you can use the committee filter or choose bills by bill number.
2) Near Search Option
This option is new from our last big update. The “Contains All” is now a dropdown that you can change to “Contains Near”. The near search requires that all the bills are in the bill within about 10 words of each other.
3) Grabby Corner for Extra Query Terms
You can now have up to 500 characters in each of the query boxes. If you are entering a long series of words you can use the grabby corner to make the box bigger so you can see what you are doing.
4) Filter by Bill Type
At long last we have added a filter for instrument type. If you don’t want resolutions, or you only want resolutions, you are going to love this new filter! If you have various words in the “none of: box intended to keep out resolutions it is well worth using this filter instead, and removing the search terms you have in the none of box.
5) Current Session / Sessions Year Option
When you create a new bill sheet it will now default to searching the current session. The 2020 and 2019-2020 sessions will stop being considered current on January 1, 2021. Any 2021 bills pre-filed in the 2020 calendar year are also considered current and will show in bill sheets set to current session. The pre-filed 2021 bills will continue to show after January 1, 2021 but the 2020 bills will fall out.
If you would like to look back in time, or if you would like to look ahead and set your search to just 2021, then use the drop down to switch your search to Session Years to get the timeline.
NOTE: If you have your search set to a single year you must grab the dot and move it backwards to create a line. Then you can adjust the search interval forwards or backwards, or even set it back to some new single year.
6) Filter by Committee
The new filter for Committees works like adding a bill by bill number. Start typing the name of the committee you would like to filter by. After you type three characters you’ll get a list of all matching committees for the states you have chosen on the state list. Keep typing to narrow down further then click on the committees you want. YOU MUST set up states and save your sheet before this feature will work.
The committee filter will limit your existing results to bills that were ever assigned to the committee(s) in question, NOT just bills currently in that committee. If you want *all* bills that went through a specific committee you will need to enter search terms that will return all bills and then apply the committee filter. If you are searching a single state put the state code (like FL or TX) into the “Contains All” box to get all bills. Unfortunately if the state abbreviation is a word, namely OR or IN, then your best bet is to enter in the whole state name. If you want to search across the whole country then try the following in the all of box: act enact* state sec*. That should get you all bills. If you want resolutions too then add: whereas resolv*.
7) Remove Out of Session Bills
The OOSB feature was new in 2017, but worth noticing anew this time of year. Hovering over the remove link will highlight bills that are old. Clicking the remove link will remove them. Removing old bills is an important part of your housekeeping. More info on the tool in this old post.
If you have a map or widget based on a bill sheet built from bills you handpicked you will definitely want to use this feature. You can wait until you have added some new 2021 bills in your widget, or you can just clear out all of the old bills as soon after Jan 1, 2021 as you want. More about this and other housekeeping topic here.
Good luck in 2021! Don’t be a stranger!
Cover Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay