BillTrack50 Help Center

Regulations are an important, yet often overlooked, part of the advocacy/lobbying process. All too often organizations work on legislative advocacy, whether that is direct lobbying or grassroots advocacy, and stop once the bill passes or fails.  But many times, the passage of legislation is not the end of the story. 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. This post suggests some tips and tricks for searching registers, bulletins and rule-change notices and using BillTrack50 and other resources to track important regulatory activity.

If you are also interested in how to advocate around regulations please see this post.

1. Bulletins are often broken into sections (pre-files, proposals, amendments, final notices and notices) and these are often easy to pick out in the register

BillTrack50 is able to pull out the process stage for regulatory notices in many states. For those that we can’t, many states add section headers or footers to each page of the register that notify what stage the proposal is in. Some states add other notifications (for instance, Nevada uses letter indicators). Unfortunately, some states you just have to read.

2. Search by Notification Indicators, Rule Section Numbers or Section Titles

Search terms are an important way to find rule changes, but how do you continue to track the ones that mean the most to your organization? 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 make sure you continue to track the progress of the proposed regulatory changes you've identified as important.

3. Read the Notice and not just the Rule Change Language 

The rule change language tells you WHAT is changing. And rule change language is important. It is how to know how this change is going to impact your organization, clients or issues. And if you want to change the WHAT, you have to read the notice to find out the WHO, WHEN, WHERE and HOW. The notice will tell you WHO is the go-to person for questions or comments, WHEN there is a hearing or when comments are due, WHERE the physical or virtual hearing location or where to send comments, and HOW to send comments, get more information or get involved (especially in the pre-proposal process).

4. There are always fewer regulatory changes that matter than legislative changes

I have seen states that 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.

5. Many states and state agencies have email lists you can subscribe to

Subscribe, Subscribe, Subscribe. You might only get an email every month, you might only get one or two a year, but if you are regulated by that agency, 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 really make a difference, and allow you to proactively work with regulators to fix potential issues before they arise.

6. Most states publish a schedule of planned regulatory action

As with most rules of thumb in the regulatory world, some states do it better than others, but most states do (and some states are required to) publish, annually, semi-annually or quarterly, the list of planned regulatory actions for that month. It’s never guaranteed, and certainly no guarantee that you won’t see an emergency issue pop up that you then have to manage.  But keep an eye out for them. They are usually in the register or published as a supplement. BillTrack50 does a good job of pulling in most of them.