Legislative sessions have their own pace. There’s often a flurry at the beginning as bills are filed. No worries, you have time to catch up on the reading before it gets down to crunch time. It’s okay if you didn’t do all the homework or connect with legislators in advance; paying attention and contacting them to let them know you care about a bill will always matter.

Take a civics refresher. If you’re of an age to remember Schoolhouse Rock you may remember the one about how a bill becomes a law. It’s talking about Congress but it isn’t a bad starting point for understanding that a proposal has to go through a committee process in both House and Senate* and then be signed by the executive.

In my state of Washington the legislature has an information page that lays out the pieces. Your state may have a similar page. It describes how to sign up to receive information on committee meetings and bills and how to testify.

Identify bill(s) of interest. Once you have a bill number, in Washington you can sign up on the bill’s information page to receive updates about it.

In Washington state bills often get introduced in both a House version and a Senate version referred to as companion bills. At some point one or the other becomes the one that’s making its way through the process. Follow both and pay attention to whether they pick up different or competing amendments. These are all going to have to be reconciled for a final version to make it through to the governor’s desk.

As I noted in my piece on homework as prep for the session, here’s where being a member of an advocacy organization with policy experience will come in very handy. They’ll have someone(s) doing analysis and identifying anything that may be either really exciting or problematic.

Read the bills. I’m not going to cover everything about how to read the bill, but do read it! Follow cross-references to other laws and definitions so you understand how it fits into existing law.

Don’t take for granted that everyone involved has actually done this, either. I remember when I left the Idaho state legislature (which is to say, lost my re-election bid) a fellow senator from the other party said to me, “We’re going to miss you. You read the bills.”

So okay, okay, a couple of tips on reading statutory language:

• Pay close attention to use of “may, “should”, and “shall”. Of these three, “shall” is the only word that means it has to happen. “May” and “should” are advisory, not directive. Not that a state agency will ignore them, but “shall” is unambiguous.
• You may be most interested in something that changes a law, like making it easier for your city to lower speed limits without a traffic engineering study. If you’re interested in something that requires funding then you may be following two bills, one that establishes a new program and the other the transportation budget, or all of that may happen in one bill. Budget bills have a lot of negotiation and your governor is going to play a role here too. I’m not going to get into that in this post.
• Understand the role of legislative intent language, which may be introduced with a phrase like “The legislature finds that…” or “It is the intent of the legislature that”. It often says some of the things you really care about. It provides context for the agency or entity charged with carrying out the sections below the findings. It may not directly tell an organization or agency to do something. It’s more a statement of the reason that they’re going to direct that something happens in the sections that follow.
  • As an example, read the language that established the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities Program in Washington state. Compare section 1, the legislative findings, with section 2 that establishes the program and defines its purpose, and section 3 that tells the state department of transportation the criteria to consider in selecting locations to receive investments under the program.**

Getting a bill introduced for printing is the easiest step in the whole process. It may sit there and never move another step. But if it does….

Contact legislators. It does matter. Enlist your friends to contact them too.

Which ones?

• The ones who represent you. As soon as the bill is available, whether you support or oppose it you can reach out to your legislators and express your opinion. Keep it short, make it personal, be clear right up front what your position is, make yourself a resource for more information.
• The ones who will be the first to take action on the bill. It’s most important to contact the legislators in the house of origin. That is, if it’s a House bill contact your state representatives; if it’s a Senate bill, contact your senator. You can definitely contact all of them; they just may not pay as much attention to bills in the other house until/unless they make it through and come across if this is a bill that was only introduced in one house.
• Bill sponsors. Somewhere in the bill information you should be able to find who’s sponsoring the bill. Contact the sponsor(s) as well. Special note for those companion bills: Contact the sponsor(s) of the companion bill in the other house, too.
• Committee members. Contact the legislators who serve on the committee the bill has been assigned to.

Keep it up as things move and change. As the bill starts to move it may get amended. Re-read it; amendments can change a lot of the meaning. You may need to contact legislators to explain what’s good or bad, right or wrong from your perspective about the effects of the amendments.

Don’t lose hope. Your bill may not make it all the way through in one session. Some of the things that might happen:

• Maybe it gets resurrected in the second session, if that’s how your state treats bills. In Washington state a bill introduced in the first session (the one that takes place after an election when the legislature has newly elected members) is still alive in the second session. After that because a new legislature is seated after an election all the bills that haven’t passed are dead.
• Maybe it comes in another door, as an amendment to a different bill.
• Maybe you don’t get an entire new program established, but you get funding for a study that will help shape the new program in a future session, or a pilot instead of a full statewide effort.
• Maybe this idea is before its time and you and other supporters are going to have to back up and do a lot more homework, relationship-building with other people and organizations to get more support for the concept, and connect between sessions with your legislators and the governor’s policy advisors.
• Maybe you started with your idea without ever talking to anyone who would have to implement it and come to find out some agency actually has really similar plans in the works. (Hint: This is where doing some homework would have helped. It’s not too late.)
• Maybe this isn’t actually something that needs a state law to make it happen at all, or getting your city or county to try it out first would let you make a better case because you’d have proof of concept.

Enjoy singing that Schoolhouse Rock tune softly to yourself as you click through legislative agendas and read bills. Fair warning, it’s an earworm.

*The bill needs to pass both House and Senate unless you live in unicameral Nebraska.

**The division I direct for the Washington State Department of Transportation oversees the Sandy Williams Connecting Communities Program. I guarantee you we read the whole thing and take it all very seriously. In following sections 2 through 5, we’re seeking to address the problems the legislature laid out in section 1. You can read stories about some of the places that received funding in our 2024 legislative report. Since I’m sharing links to items associated with my work I’ll remind you that this is a personal blog and I’m not writing this in my role as a state employee.