All requirements are in the documentation. There are many steps and information inside. Due October 31, 2019 Submit a brief summary of the bill that you will be reporting on. This summary needs to be
Legislative Bill Activity
Refer to the assignment directions for the Texas Legislature Online (TLO) link. Confirm that you are searching for bills in the 86(R) – 2019 year. Select the “Filed House Bill” or “Filed Senate Bill” link, depending on what bill you are searching for.
For this example, we will look at SB 9 – Relating to election integrity and voter access.
Selecting SB 9 returns the following screen:
For our activities, we will focus on the “History”, “Text”, and “Bill Stages” tabs.
The “History” tab provides an overview of the activity connected to the bill. A calendar of actions taken on the bill is presented in the lower left-hand corner. This tab also identifies what committees have been assigned the bill and what the results of votes in the committees are, if any.
The “Text” tab provides written documents connected to the bill. The bill, as filed, is under the “Bill” section. This is, typically, hard to read as it contains many redactions and changes. The documents under the “Analysis” tab, are handy for our purposes. These documents provide summary information about the bill and the information is presented in an easy-to-read format. We will use the “Witness” list later, when we explore who is for and against the proposed legislation.
The analysis document for SB 9 provides a succinct, 3 paragraph statement of intent. SB 9, as written, is 20 pages. It is handy to have a summary without the redactions and legal formatting of the introduced bill.
For the one-paragraph summary of your bill, look at the analysis document, if any. That document will provide the author’s / sponsor’s statement of intent. Read the statement and write a summary, in your own words, based on the information presented. Your summary will be only a few sentences long. The intent of this assignment, is to make sure you have accessed your chosen bill and know what the topic is. You need to provide this information in your own words. As mentioned in class, do not cut and paste or rewrite the title of the bill only. That does not illustrate understanding of the topic.
Not all bills will have reported analysis. As a bill makes its way through the system, the analysis will be written after certain actions are taken (positive vote in a committee, deliberations that result in amendment of the bill language before passing out of committee, etc.).
If your bill does not have an analysis document available in TLO, you can still get information about the proposed content. Search online. I suggest using the format – Texas 2019 SB 9. Insert your bill number in place of SB 9. The following bills do not have an analysis document:
Issue – Abortion
HB896 - Relating to prohibiting abortion and protecting the rights of an unborn child.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/04/11/texas-lawmaker-abortion-bill-leach-tinderholt-safety-concern/
