Welcome To The Bill Status Updating
Service of The California State Senate!
The goal of this service is to keep you informed as bills you
care about move through the legislature.
Please keep this file, as it has information you may want to
refer to in the future.
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Information available:
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As bills move through the legislature many things may happen to
them. A separate record is maintained for each bill which
itemizes those happenings. That record is called the "bill
history". Following is a list of the most common events re-
corded in the bill history:
1. a bill is introduced
2. it is assigned to a committee
3. it is "set for hearing" before a committee
4. acted on (voted on) by a committee
5. amended by the author, or by the committee
6. acted on (voted on) by the entire Senate
7. defeated, or sent to the Assembly
In the Assembly it goes through a similar process
8. defeated in the Assembly, or, passed in the Assembly
and sent to the governor, or amended in the Assembly
and returned to the Senate for concurrance in the
amendments
9. defeated in the Senate, or, passed to the governor, or
re-referred to committee.
10. vetoed by the governor, or signed into law
11. chaptered by the Secretary of State
In addition to the "bill history" the full text of the original
(introduced) version of the bill and each amended version is
available to you. Also, corresponding to each committee hear-
ing and to each floor vote, there is an analysis of the bill
prepared by legislative analysts. Also there is a bill-status
document which summarizes the latest status of the bill.
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Daily Process:
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Each day, we look through all of the changes to the bills and
send you electronic-mail copies of any documents added or
changed which relate to the bills you are interested in. This
means that if a new bill version is created, a new analysis, or
anything else, then you will get this file sent to you. You
will probably also get new copies of the bill history file and
the bill status file because those change fairly often.
(Note: if you signed up for notification service, rather than
subscription service, we will just tell you which files have
changed, rather than actually sending the files to you. This
can be less costly if you pay to receive electronic mail. It's
up to you to use MAIL, FTP, Gopher, or WWW to get the files.)
Some actions which get reported in the paper do not always
become a matter of record until some time later.
In particular, when the Governor signs or vetoes a bill, it may
be a week or longer before official documents are transmitted
between the Governor's office, the Legislature, and the Secre-
tary of State. Only after that transmittal is complete will you
see the veto message, or the chaptered version of the bill ap-
pear in these archives.
Also, bills are sometimes "amended in committee". When that
occurs, it may be days before the amended version is available
on-line. This is so, because most amendments in committee are
with reference to intent, not specific language. Thus, follow-
ing the committee meeting, the committee staff, the author and
the lawyers have to get their heads together, agree on the in-
tent of the committee, and figure out the legal language neces-
sary to implement that intent.
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Terminating a Subscription:
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If you decide that you wish to discontinue this service, send
mail to senate-news@sen.ca.gov and include (in the body of the
message) a command in the following form:
UNSUBSCRIBE BILL bill-no
where "bill-no" is the number of the bill you subscribed to.
Typical bill numbers include SB_244 and AB_244. Example:
TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
SUBJECT: doesn't matter
TEXT: UNSUBSCRIBE BILL SB_244
Every two years, the legislature ends a session and we will
reset all subscriptions to bills.
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More Information:
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If you need more help using the Senate News service, send mail
to senate-news@sen.ca.gov with a text line of "HELP."
If you have a problem with this service, please contact
"News.editor@sen.ca.gov." If you have questions about the
legislative process or a particular bill, please contact your
legislator. You can find out your Senator's name and phone
number by using the FINGER command and FINGERing your
zipcode@sen.ca.gov.
For example, if your ZIP code is 90210, you can finger:
finger 90210@sen.ca.gov
Note that this command may vary, depending on your client
software on your Internet access system.
You can also do this using electronic mail as follows:
TO: finger@sen.ca.gov
SUBJECT: 90210
TEXT: doesn't matter
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Subscribing to a Bill:
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To obtain information on a particular bill, send electronic
mail to Senate-News@sen.ca.gov including the following command:
SUBSCRIBE BILL bill-no
where "bill-no" is the number of the bill you subscribed to.
Typical bill numbers include SB_244 and AB_244. Example:
TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
SUBJECT: doesn't matter
TEXT: SUBSCRIBE BILL AB_244
"SUBSCRIBE" will result in the full text of any added or
changed documents that relate to the bill being sent to you by
electronic mail.
An alternative to "SUBSCRIBE" is "NOTIFY" which will result in
a message to you identifying new or changed documents.
Example:
TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
SUBJECT: doesn't matter
TEXT: NOTIFY BILL SB_244
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