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Links For Government Information
- US Legislative Info
- Federal Government Agencies
- National Associations
- State Government
- Index of State General Sites
- Alabama Legislative Information System: Legislative information is available for the current session. Use the Alabama Legislative Information System Online (ALISON) to retrieve the text, current status, and history of bills and resolutions, as well as end of the day reports, confirmations granted by the Senate. ALISON requires Internet Explorer 4.x or higher and the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Although ALISON appears on the legislature's site and bears the seals of both chambers, the introductory page has the disclaimer that ALISON's data is not the official information provided by the legislative offices. The Senate broadcasts live audio, using Windows Media Player.
- Alaska Legislature Online: The Bill Action and Status Inquiry System (BASIS) contains the spectrum of information, including house and senate calendars, committee and public hearing schedules, bills in committee, and bill summaries organized by subject. Type a bill root into the search engine to retrieve its status and history. Information is archived back to 1993. BASIS offers a Bill Tracking Management Facility, which requires an account.
- Arizona Legislative Information System Online: Search current statutes and bills by keyword, bill number, or action; browse floor calendars, committee agendas, and session laws since 1995. To track a large number of bills, register for the "My A.L.I.S." This free service (registration is required) combines access to the same legislative information with the ability to create and maintain tracking lists. The system's log-in screen displays alerts when any tracked bills are posted to a committee agenda or floor calendar.
- Arkansas General Assembly: The bill number is necessary to view its full text or status, or to download it in Adobe Acrobat Reader format. There are search engines to retrieve bills by keyword or by primary sponsor or to locate committee meeting schedules. The Batch Bill Status feature (which requires registration) supports tracking up to 40 bills. The site also posts a monthly calendar of committee meetings. The current month is the default; use the pull-down menu to change the month or year (to 2001 or 2003). Bills, resolutions, and session acts from previous sessions are archived back to 1997 (81st General Assembly).
- Official California Legislative Information: Bills, resolutions, and constitutional amendments are available here. The site posts daily updates of assembly and senate bills in progress, by chamber. Within each chamber's index, the updates are organized by bill name and give the status and history for each entry. The search engine locates bills by number or keyword and limits searches by session and house of origin. The day’s calendar for each chamber is online.
- Colorado General Assembly: Each chamber posts the text, fiscal notes, and committee votes of bills and resolutions, which you do not read online but download in WordPerfect or Adobe Acrobat Reader format (depending on the file). Bills are listed by number under Status. Calendars and journals are also available. Take the link to pertinent legislative session information to search by bill number. Prior session information dates back to 1997.
- Connecticut General Assembly: The General Assembly has two pages, with vary slightly in access to information. If you approach the resource through the General Assembly's home page and use Netscape or an old version of Internet Explorer, you will be directed to http://www.cga.state.ct.us/default.htm. This is a simply laid-out index of hyperlinked headings. Here the General Assembly offers a full text search engine that targets a spectrum of some 30 legislative databases, including amendment, bill analyses, calendars, journals, and session transcripts. Many date back to 1988.
- Delaware Legislative Information System: Search by bill number or key word (under All Legislation). The page offers each house’s agenda, meeting notices, and ready list, as well as the house journal and roll call. Some committee information is available. Take the link to Previous General Assemblies to use search engines for the 138th and 139th assemblies.
- D.C. Council: Bills are listed by number under Legislation. It's also possible to retrieve a bill (or its status) by keyword or browse lists of legislation by member name, counsel period or referral committee. There's a search tool for retrieving voting records by member name and council period. The council calendar is posted.
- State of Florida Legislature: "Online Sunshine," the legislature’s official guide, posts daily calendars and journals, meeting schedules, indexes of bills by number, and a full text bill search engine, for both the house and senate. The Daily Bill Information "Citator" gives statistics, histories, sponsors, a listing of bills by subject, vetoes, and statute citations in all versions of pending or recently enacted legislation. The site offers a general subject index of bills, as well as reports of bill sponsors, by member. Budget information is available for both chambers.
- Georgia Legislature: Each house has an index of bills and resolutions in number sequence, as well as calendars of committee meetings. The search engine retrieves bills by number, keyword, affected code section, date of introduction, author, committee, and sponsor.
- Hawaii State Legislature: You may retrieve the text, status, and committee reports of bills and resolutions by number or keyword, or browse an index of the same documents. Indexes are also available of all bills that were introduced, passed, or vetoed in the current session. Orders of the day, referral sheets, action sheets, hearing notices, and bill packages are online, too. The legislative archive goes back to 1999.
- Idaho Legislature: Find bills by running a keyword search, browsing the legislative topic index, or browsing the "Mini-Data" current status list. The page has indexes of bills signed into law (including effective dates and chapter numbers) or vetoed, as well as meeting calendars, session summaries, and committee and task force minutes. Information from the 2001 session is archived.
- Illinois General Assembly: Browse bills or resolutions by chamber and number, or search by bill number. Schedules, journals, rules, and debate transcripts are online for both chambers. The house also posts roll calls.
- Indiana General Assembly: Search by bill number or keyword, or browse lists of introduced bills, enrolled acts, bills approved over the governor’s veto and resolutions. Look under Additional Bill Information for daily bill actions, bill action history, a list of bills in conference, a table of affected statutes, and tables of correspondences between public law and enrolled act numbers. Other resources include calendars and schedules for each house, House Journals. committee schedules, floor motions, and deadlines for legislative action. The calendar is also available for the interim (when the assembly has adjourned). A BillWatch service is available to Access Indiana Information Network subscribers. The archives goes back to 1997.
- Iowa General Assembly: Session information includes daily and debate calendars and indexes of bills, resolutions, amendments and committee reports. If you know a document’s file number, you can pull it up with a search engine (under either Bills and Amendments or Bill History). A bill tracking system is available on written request; Windows Media Player broadcasts of floor debates are available when the assembly is in session.
- Kansas Legislative Services: You can find the full text of bills by number or keyword or search for them by subject. There are search tools for retrieving signed or enrolled bills, resolutions and concurrent resolutions, a keyword search engine for signed or enrolled bills, and an index of vetoed bills (dating back to 1998). The site has agendas and committee schedules for each house. When the legislature is in session, Be forewarned that the pull-down menu does not give any warning that some of the listed items are available only by subscription. Premium subscribers to the Information Network of Kansas have access to session laws, bill packets, and two bill-tracking services, Multi-Bill Tracking and Lobbyist-in-a-Box. Engines for retrieving bills by number, keyword or subject also appear at CyberSession, a project of CJ Online and the Topeka Capital-Journal. This site links to the free services of the Information Network of Kansas.
- Kentucky Legislature Legislation & Legislative Record: Look under Front Page Information for each session and house to browse lists (by bill number) of bills with two readings, laid on the clerk’s desk, laid on the table, or subject to proceedings. Other lists indicate bills by committee; in various stages of being passed, enrolled, or vetoed; or prefiled for the current or upcoming session. A search engine is available for the 2001 legislative session and for the 1986-2001 legislative record. Bill documents are in Word format, and there is a link for downloading the viewer.
- Louisiana State Legislature: The legislature has four query boxes for each session. Retrieve instruments by number, legislator name, number range, or keyword search (of the bill summaries). When the legislature is in session, the site offers a list of vetoed bills, charts of correspondences between bill and act numbers, a subject index, calendars, journals, and archived broadcasts of committee meetings or house proceedings. Live RealPlayer broadcasts of committee proceedings are available. For fiscal information, go to each chamber's page. Sign up to receive e-mail notification of interim committee meetings.
- Maine Legislature: This page provides session laws of the 118th, 119th and 120th legislatures and a search engine of the state's statutes. The session information page (http://janus.state.me.us/legis/bills/) provides a browsable list of bill titles and engines to search for bill text (by number or keyword) or LD number. Take the Bill Directory to view the index by LD number or to search status (by LD, LR, or paper number; subject; or committee, sponsor, or cosponsor name). Under Session Information, there are lists of pre-cloture bills by member and by subject. Schedules are posted for public hearings and work sessions for committees, the house, and the senate. Journals and calendars are online for both chambers, as are bill summaries and fiscal bill summaries.
- Maryland General Assembly: There is a search engine for retrieving information and status by bill number. The results identify statutes that will be affected and link to various versions of the bill text, amendments, fiscal notes and conference committee documents. To retrieve the full text without scrolling through the status information, take the Search link and check amendments, bill text, or fiscal notes. For the status (but not the text) of a bill or resolution, scan the indexes, which organize pending legislation by sponsor, subject, file code, or statute. Subscriptions are available for profile indexes of bills pertaining to designated interests and for up-to-the-minute updates. There are also lists, by date, of signed or vetoed bills. The site posts house and senate agendas, as well as committee and budget hearing schedules. Budget documents are online, as is a list of bills signed by the governor.
- The 182nd General Court of Massachusetts: This site allows retrieval of bills or their history, by number or keyword. There are lists of numbered matters by chamber (for which only a brief synopsis is given), as well as house, senate and joint calendars, committee hearing schedules and budget documents. Streaming video coverage of floor proceedings is available and requires Windows Media Player.
- Michigan Legislature: The legislature has launched a revamped Website that moves search engines for the session and the compiled laws into prominent positions, while organizing other links in a column with telegraphic headings. The Legislative Search Wizard has the user click through a series of questions, one at a time, before retrieving matching documents. The full text search engine covers all documents in the current legislative session; the advanced version allows results to be limited by type of document, chamber, and session, dating back to 1997. Other engines are available for specialized searches. the basic legislative engine retrieves a bill, resolution, or sponsor by bill number or resolution letter; another retrieves pending legislation by categories of subjects. Yet another searches by public act affected. Each of these options brings up the full text of the bill or resolution, its status, and the history of action that has been taken on it. The Bill Tracking options pull up bills that were introduced, engrossed, or enrolled on a specified date and list all bill activity for the most recent date that any occurred. The site also posts calendars and session schedules for each house, journals, and tables of public acts and compiled laws.
- Minnesota State Legislature: Minnesota allows multiple routes for retrieving bills or their status, such as bill or revisor number, keywords in the short or long description, authors, or statutory citation. The top bill tracking page also offers locators, by bill number, for each chamber. Other resources include a search engine for committee reports and unofficial engrossments, topic listings of bills, journals and committee schedules for both chambers, and RealPlayer broadcasts of senate and house proceedings. Completed fiscal notes are searchable back to 1997. Legislative information for prior sessions dates back to 1993.
- Mississippi Legislature: The legislative calendar contains the timetable for processing legislation in the current session. The bill status system has bills (in full text) by session, and within that by committee and author. A full-text search engine is available for each session, regular and extraordinary, back to 1999; within each session, it's possible to limit a query to specified document databases (such as house bills, conference reports, veto messages). The legislative calendar and committee schedules are available for each house. Bill status system files come in HTML or Adobe Acrobat formats.
- Missouri General Assembly: The bill tracking page supports searching for bills by number, sponsor or keyword. The same search capability is available from both the house and senate home pages. When the legislature is in session, the site broadcasts floor debate in RealAudio. For hearing schedules and journals, head to either the senate or the house of representatives’ site; each site posts this information for both chambers. Each chamber posts lists of bills, bill activity reports and statements of the day’s activity, and maintains session information back to 1995. The senate posts lists of bills that are truly agreed to and finally passed, as well as a topical index of bills in both houses. The house offers more than a dozen types of bill reports, including those in conference, in house or senate committees, withdrawn from consideration, and delivered to the governor. You can search fiscal notes from the house page.
- Montana Legislative Branch: Interim committee information is currently available. For sessions from 1999-2001, choose the year, then select the LAWS database. (For 1997, the site offers a directory listing of bills introduced.) Under this, agendas, journals, and floor actions are posted for each house. Search for bill information by bill or draft number, subject, or primary sponsor. There is also an engine for keyword searching the text of bills, and another that handles extensive parameter settings, such as drafter, status, or requestor. This search page will also generate a list of all introduced and un-introduced bills. The committee and hearing information page has yet another search tool for its subject. The LAWS Preference List system permits tracking the status of a group of bills; although it is free, it requires creating an account and accepting terms of use. Agendas, journals, and floor actions are posted for each chamber.
- Nebraska Unicameral: The session calendar and legislative journal are available as Adobe Acrobat documents, as are budget status and report documents. Bills and resolutions are retrievable by number or keyword. One-line descriptions are available of new bills that have been introduced, by date. The site also posts Summary Sheets compiled from each day's Journal. The site offers live streaming video of Unicameral activity (using RealPlayer). Past broadcasts are archived.
- Nevada State Legislature: Information, arranged by session, ranges from lists of bills or resolutions by chamber, sponsor, or action to lists of legislation by effective date. Committee schedules are available, and there are also keyword search engines for bills (full text), committee minutes, and session journals.
- New Hampshire General Court: The Quick Search option retrieves information by bill or LSR number, keyword in the title, and session year (back to 1989). Take the Power option to search by committee, session year, status in a chamber, originating body, or sponsor (among other choices). To search by keyword, use the Bill Text Search tool. You can also retrieve a list of bills introduced into each house. Calendars and journals are available for both the senate and the house of representatives.
- New Jersey State Legislature: You may obtain the full text of bills by number, sponsor, subject, synopsis keyword, date of last action, or governor's action. There is a thesaurus for determining the subject heading that would cover a particular type of bill. Bill information is archived back to 1996. The current legislative calendar is available, as are transcriptions of public hearings. Some committee proceedings are broadcast and archived, using Windows Media Player.
- New Mexico Legislature: The Bill Finder searches for bills, memorials, resolutions or capital outlay requests by number, number range, chamber, subject index or keyword. Data is available for each regular and special session back to 1996. A free Bill Watcher service is available for tracking bills of interest; registration is required.
- New York State Assembly Legislative Information System: The search engine uses the bill number or keywords and retrieves a summary, with a list of actions, when available; take the Text link in the Summary to read a bill in its entirety. Calendars of the session, committee agendas and public hearings are posted.
- North Carolina General Assembly: Use the number to look up introduced bills or session laws. You can also search their full text by keyword or retrieve them by chapter number. The bill inquiry system (Under Bill Info) will search by any combination of bill or chapter number, chamber, committee, county, date of introduction or last action, short title, sponsor, status, or term word (part of a standard set of words used by the Legislative Library’s list; follow links to view the list). The database dates back to 1997. Fiscal notes are retrievable by session and chamber. Vote and roll call history reports are available for each chamber. Interim, senate, and house calendars are online, as is extensive budget information.
- North Dakota Legislative Branch: You may retrieve the full text of bills, resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and memorial resolutions through lists (arranged by number) or the topic index. The Version or Action Inquiry generates lists of versions of or legislative action on a measure, by number. Other postings include house and senate journals, legislative deadlines for the current session, and a table of effective dates. Sign up under Legislative Meetings to receive e-mail notice of committee meeting notices and minutes.
- Ohio General Assembly: The top page offers query boxes for retrieving bills by number, keyword, and house. The Search page will find bills by number; list them by sponsor; find bills, analyses, fiscal notes, or statutes by keyword; or list session laws, by session (back to 1997). Head to the bottom to search Legislative Office of Education Oversight publications or Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review weekly reports. All search options also appear in a Quick Action List down the left side of each page. The ’Legislative Service Commissions bill analyses and status reports are available, as are the session calendar (under Today at the Statehouse) and two search engines for fiscal notes. The house and senate each post their calendar and committee schedule.
- Oklahoma Legislative Information System: OLIS offers a large number of bill tracking status reports for both active and inactive measures, which you can set up by specific measure, subject, history of actions, citation, author, committee, step in the legislative process, conferee, or status in conference or GCCA. The text of measures is available in RTF files, which combine pending legislation that has been subject to the same action (for example, all introduced measures in a particular chamber). Both houses post their agendas and meeting notices.
- Oregon State Legislature: You can search or browse the full text of bills or laws from the current session or previous ones back to 1995. Under each session, there are “amend and repeal” tables indicating affected revised civil statutes sections, tables of enacted measures, cumulative history files, third reading calendars, and an index of measures by topic. The 2002 special session page offers the full text of measures and measure history by house. The site broadcasts chamber and committee proceedings with RealPlayer; previous broadcasts (beginning in 1999) are archived. Committee schedules are available for both houses.
- ’Pennsylvania General Assemblys Electronic Bill Room: Retrieve information about bills and resolutions by number or keyword. (The databases for these search engines date back to 1981 and 1991, respectively.) All pending legislation is indexed by chamber and by topic. Take the Bill Tracking Reports link to generate lists of actions, bills and resolutions introduced, or new printers’ numbers of bills. Look under Session for house and senate schedules and calendars.
- Rhode Island General Assembly: Retrieve the text of pending legislation with the keyword search engine, or by browsing a subject index (under Law Revision Office; look for General Laws Section List Sorted by Legal Category.) Bills are available in either .PDF or .HTML . The search engine for bill status or history looks by report title, committee, subject, sponsor, number, or type of action. Other resources include journals, daily bill introductions by house, and committee and floor calendars. Take the link to the Law Revision office for lists of all enacted or potential changes to the general laws, based on pending legislation.
- South Carolina General Assembly State House Network: South Carolina offers multiple routes for bills. The full text search engine compares keywords against the text of bills, while another uses the bill number. The legislation page also generates reports by searches by sponsor name, short subject, status or committee. The search results include a list of all actions taken on a bill and link to all previous versions of it. Introduction sheets and pre-filed bills area also available. The General Assembly offers a subscription service that sends e-mail notification when activity has occurred affecting user-designated bills. The Palm-Size State House program makes e-mail alerts, chamber schedules, and other information available to any device that uses the Palm Operating System. (Either Palm VII or AvantoGo is required). The site posts calendars, journals, and meeting information for both the house and the senate. Both chambers broadcast their proceedings live; RealPlayer is required for viewing.
- South Dakota Legislative Research Council: Use the bill menu under the Current Legislative Session to find a bill by number, view a list of bills (which can be all in the current session or a list you have customized), or run a keyword search of the full text of all bills. Look under Reports for a subject index of bills, as well as lists of ones that have been signed or vetoed by the governor, or whose text has been entirely changed (under Hoghouse). To set up bill tracking lists, use a free service called “My Legislative Research,” which allows users to customize the Legislative Research Council page. For calendars, journals, committee agendas and minutes, and live hearing audio, press the Chamber or Committee icon.
- Tennessee General Assembly: Locate the text of bills and resolutions by browsing the filed bill index (which is organized by number and chamber), or by using the search engine, which recognizes either the bill number or keywords. There is a list of chaptered bills; the site also lists bills by effective date. Each chamber posts its calendar and committee schedules on its home page.
- Texas Legislature Online: If you know the bill number, use the Bill Information search engine to pull up the history, captions, actions, or text. Keyword searches are available for bill texts or analyses and fiscal notes; you can also retrieve bills by any combination of author, sponsor, committee, subject, and action. The amendments search engine recognizes chamber, author, bill number, reading, amendment type, action, and date or date range. House and senate calendars and committee schedules are online. Take the TLO Interactive link to view lists of bills by author, subject, or committee. Use the Personal Bill List option to set up, at no charge, a tracking system for bills of your choice. Calendars and hearing schedules are posted here for both houses. This page posts reports of bills filed by date or chamber.
- Utah State Legislature: Look under Sessions for a separate page for each session of the legislature (including special ones) dating back to 1997. Each session page offers engines to search the status or text of bills, the database of passed bills, and journals. The current Bills link page has lists of bills that were passed or introduced (categorized by number, subject, or sponsor). The Bill Browser identifies bills at various stages in the legislative process, by chamber. Use the free tracking service to create a list of bills and their status. Budget information includes fiscal notes.
- Vermont Legislature: The Legislative Bill Tracking System offers multiple means of access to bills and resolutions. One search engine recognizes sponsor names or keywords while another uses the measure’s number to pull up its current status. Reports are available of almost every imaginable categorization, such as introduced, passed by one chamber, passed by both chambers, enacted, in committee, with recent activity or affecting VSA sections. There are also browsable lists of various categories of bills and resolutions on the Legislative Documents page, which posts calendars and journals as well. This page generally offers full-text search engines as well, which were "temporarily unavailable" on my updating visits in November 2001 and April 2002. The current week's committees meeting schedule and selected meeting minutes are available. The legislative archive goes back to 1987.
- Virginia General Assembly Legislative Information System: The system offers both a subject index and a searchable database of bills and resolutions. Multiple retrieval options are available for checking on status, including (but by no means limited to) bill number, committee, date of introduction, house of passage, and legislation that has been vetoed or carried over to the next session. The site also posts meeting schedules, daily floor calendars and minutes of floor activity. A limited free version is now available of the subscription bill tracking service called Lobbyist-in-a-Box. Follow the links to the subscription service to sign up for the free version, which allows registered users to follow and receive e-mail status reports of up to five bills.
- Washington State Legislature: Most of the bill tracking resources appear under Bill Info. The search engine is the easiest way to access the text of bills. The topical index gives bill numbers, which link to summary pages with synopses, dates and natures of actions taken on it, and links to the text of bills, amendments, digests, reports, and other related files. The Daily Status Report lists all bills in numerical order and gives their current status; this is one long text document without external links or internal jumps. There are several tables of correspondences between legislation and the code; one highlights sections affected by new legislation. Legislative information dates back to 1997. The Legislative Info link (from the legislature home page) contains calendars for the session, meeting schedules for both houses, and lists of legislation sponsored by each member.
- West Virginia Legislature: A no frames version of this site is now available. The Bill Status link allows you to search or browse bills, abstracts, and resolutions by session, dating back to 1993. (The Bill Tracking link in the left column points to the same information.) Each session page offers many avenues to browse status information, such as by committee, sponsor, subject, or affected code section. Committee schedules and session calendars are currently under Interims. Daily summaries are available on the top page.
- Wisconsin Legislature: The most avenues to information appear in the Infobases, which cover the text of bills every step of the way, calendars, calendars, schedules, journals, committee records, statutes, rules, information about legislators, and more. Many of the infobases contain data for the 1999, 1997, or 1995 sessions. Access any of these through the Folio Search link under Bills & Resolutions. The proposal number and session date are necessary to obtain the text and history of legislation (dating back to1995) under the Bills & Resolutions link. A subject index offers another way to locate the full text of a proposal. There are also lists of introduced proposals by chamber and by type. A keyword search engine is available for enrolled bills. Other resources include a session schedule, weekly committee schedules, and daily floor calendars for each chamber. The InSession page for each chamber reports the current item and question of debate, updated every 10 seconds.
- Wyoming State Legislature: The Bill Information page under a session contains lists of bills by chamber, by title, by sponsor name, and by subject. The full text is available, by chamber and bill number, for bills prepared for introduction, engrossed bills, chaptered acts, and enrolled acts. Daily actions appear by bill number under Daily Bill Status. Calendars and committee hearings are posted. Prior legislative information goes back to 1995.
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