Legislative Research

Solid legislative research can help us know whether to support or oppose proposed legislation.  The basics of legislative research are simply knowing the online tools that can help you find and track bills as they progress through the political process.  The next step in legislative research is finding out what other groups, whose foundations are at the core of the topic, have researched and determined about each bill.  Benefit from their expertise by reaching out to these groups.  Get to know them.  Get on their email lists.  Attend their meetings. 

Federal Legislation

These websites will help you find out more about federal legislation, as well as providing tools for tracking federal legislation as it moves through the political process.

  • GovTrack.us Follow the status of Federal legislation using trackers to keep up with the latest activity in Congress
  • The Library of Congress. Thomas  In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, legislative information from the Library of Congress
  • VoteSmart.org The Voter's Self-Defense system.  Find all your elected officials usiing your 9-digit zip code.

 Colorado Legislation

Colorado General Assembly provides much useful information. What you will find most useful is found in just a few of the links.  Under the House and Senate headings (labeled Current Regular Session) you’ll find links to their daily Calendar and Bills.  You’ll also find a link labeled Contact Information.  From these links, you can track legislation using the bill number, the name of the sponsor or searching by topic.  You can also find contact information for all 100 legislators, the committees they serve on and the legislative staff.

  • House and Senate Calendar Links The House Calendar and Senate Calendar links are updated in the evening prior to the scheduled day, once the current day is closed.  In these calendars you’ll find what is currently scheduled as well as what is coming up for the particular committees (this is found towards the bottom of the docs).  The easiest way to find the bill you’re looking for is to use the search option and type in the bill number.
  • House and Senate Bills Links  The House Bills  and Senate Bills links contains a multitude of information. You can find out a bill’s
  1. History (click the History link beside each bill), committees (if you click on the House Bills link, you’ll find the bills that are in that house committee and in the same vein, if you click on the Senate Bills link, you’ll find the bills in that senate committee),
  2. Who voted which way on the bill (follow the Votes link, until you see a table of who voted and how they voted),
  3. A current version of the bill in PDF format.  Sponsors of a bill. 
  4. This can help you find new bills coming through committee.
  • Contact Information  Contact Information (or Pink Book) link will take you to a directory for all Colorado representatives and senators.  This information includes their phone numbers and email addresses.  Their mail address is always addressed to the Senator or Representative and using the following address:   200 E Colfax Denver, CO 80203
  • How do you find the members of a committee?  The Committees links under the respective House/Senate links will list the committees in that area, as well as a link to the current members in that committee.  Once you know who makes up that committee, you can look up their detailed information in the Contact Information pink table pages.  Effectively advocating for the legislation that we care about can let our elected officials know where we stand on the issues.   To find members of a given committee, you’ll click into the Contact Information link (from the main General Assembly page).  Look at the side bar – you’ll see a breakdown of Senate (Senators by District; Officers; Committees) and House (Representatives by District, Officers, Committees).  Click on the respective Committees links to see the committees and the members of those committees.  Also, refer to the documents, provided by the Colorado General Assembly, and linked below.

Listed here are references to the Colorado General Asssembly website.