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POLS 2622: State and Local Government — Research proposed legislation

Resources for researching development of public policy via a state's proposed and existing legislation, committee/commission work, news coverage, public polling, and court decision involving specific areas of policy.

Research proposed legislation

This page provides tips for uncovering proposed and pending legislation through two research tools:

  1. Use the National Conference of State Legislature's Bill Tracking Database for access to proposed legislation for particular policy areas. NCSL edits this database to capture bills in a limited number of policy areas, so it won't be relevant for all public policy research.
  2. Use the NexisUni U.S. Bill Tracking database to research bills in all states. Bill information provides additional links to information on actions taken on the bill, sponsor information, and more.

Statutes, bills, hearings

1) The National Conference of State Legislatures 50-State Searchable Bill Tracking Database organizes proposed state bills by public policy categories including Postsecondary Education, Environment, and Education 

 

2) The NexisUni Advanced Search U.S. Bill Tracking contains the text of bills from all states, is updated constantly, and often includes all bills from the last 30+ years. After searching, use the Jurisdiction filter to the left of the search results (see first screen capture below) to limit results to bills from a particular state. See the Legislator Profile link in the About this Document box to the right of the text of any bill to link to information about the bill's sponsor(s) (see second screen capture below).

 

 

See link to Legislator Profile for information on bill’s sponsor: