The Bills Tool

Under the Legislation menu, the Bills tool allows you to look up information on bills from the current session (Federal or State). You can display any of these bills to your users as Key Legislation on your website. There are two important tabs in this tool:

• Bills
• Bills Layout

The first six minutes of this video walks you through the Bills tool. 

Please note that the video above still shows the old menu and styles. The video will be updated as soon as possible. For now, the text below describes the menu path to access this tool. Beyond that, none of the functionality has changed. 

Bills

Mouse over the Legislation menu and click on the first option: Bills. The default tab is the Bills tool. This tool allows you to find and research legislation, track the progress of certain bills, and display that information to your users.

To look up a bill, first click the search icon next to the page’s heading  or click the New Saved Bill icon in the top-right corner. Next, choose the governmental level of the bill: US for Federal legislation, or the appropriate state abbreviation for state-level legislation. Then enter text into the search field. You may search by the bill’s title, number, or even keywords such as taxation or agriculture. Press the search button to see the list of all bills to which your search terms apply.

If you press the info link (the letter i) to the right of a bill’s name, you will see information on that bill including title, sponsors, roll call votes, actions, committees/subcommittees, and a link for more information.

In order to add a bill to the list you are tracking on the admin site, click the Track link at the far right (the plus sign). You may track as many bills as you like. Whenever you access the Manage Bills tool, you will see this list of tracked bills.

On the left side of the list of tracked bills, you will see an edit icon (a pencil) next to each bill. If you click this icon, you will able to customize the information that is displayed about this bill. You can add a custom name, an explanation of the bill, select your association’s position on the bill, categorize the bill, and even spotlight the bill.

If you spotlight the bill, it will appear to your users under a list called Key Legislation. Spotlighted bills are shown in alphabetical order based on the category to which they are assigned. You can create those categories via the Bill Tracker Layout tool shown below.

Bills Layout

Mouse over the Legislation menu and click on the first option: Bills. The second tab under the page heading is the Bills Layout tool. This tool allows you to adjust the settings for how your users see the key legislation that you have spotlighted for them.

To create a new category of legislation, click on the “new category” icon at the top-right corner of the page. You will see a pop-up where you can enter the name of the new category. Hit save when you are done. The newly created category will appear below the previously created ones.

To re-order the categories for the users, simply drag and drop them to the position you want.

You can also change the default jurisdiction using the dropdown menu at the top of the page. Use this to ensure that your users initially see the bills for the federal level or a particular state, depending on your VoterVoice package. Bills for both state and federal level cannot be shown at the same time.