Reading a bill on the Florida Senate's site
A Senate bill page holds the text of every version, the amendments, the staff analyses and the votes. Here is what each part tells you.
In brief
Why it matters: What a bill does is in its text and its staff analysis, and the Senate publishes both.
The big picture: The bill page records each version, every committee stop, every amendment and every recorded vote.
What's next: Dorworth News stories on legislation will name the version of the bill they describe and link to it.
Every bill filed in the Florida Senate has a page on the Senate’s website, and that page is the most complete public record of the bill’s life.1 The bill number, the sponsor and a short title sit at the top; below them, the page divides the record into parts.
The text and the analysis
The bill text holds each version of the bill: the bill as filed, each committee substitute adopted along the way and the enrolled bill passed by both chambers. In a bill that changes existing law, words being added to the statutes are underlined and words being deleted are struck through, so the changes can be read directly against the law as it stands.
Senate committee staff write an analysis of a bill before it is heard in committee, describing current law, what the bill would change and its fiscal impact. The analysis is often the clearest plain-language account of a bill, but the text is what becomes law, and where the two differ, Dorworth News reports the text.
The history and the votes
The bill history lists every action in order: the committees the bill was referred to, each hearing and its result, the amendments adopted and the floor votes. The vote history shows how each senator voted on each recorded vote, and the amendments section holds the text of every amendment filed, adopted or not.
Most bills have a companion filed in the House, listed among the related bills. A bill can stall in one chamber while its companion moves in the other, so Dorworth News says which bill a vote was on.1
Sources
- 1.
Bias note The author served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2007 to 2012.
Publisher and Editor
Chris Dorworth is the founder and publisher of Dorworth News Corporation and the editor of Dorworth News. He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2007 to 2012, representing House District 34, and was Speaker-designate. He holds an MBA from Duke University and is a former managing partner of a Florida government-affairs firm. He is an author and the host of The Contrarian Raconteur podcast.
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