During the legislative session, you will want to follow the action on the bills your working group is supporting. The Bill Information section of the Washington State Legislature web site is the main place you will go for this. If you want to search multiple bills on a regular basis, the Bill Tracking Tutorial from the Legislative Information Center can introduce you to the tools for this. The LIC also offers a glossary – the terminology can be quite confusing.
Before you visit your legislator, you will want to check on the status of bills on which they are primary sponsors and see whether they are secondary sponsors on any of the focus bills you are discussing with them. Each bill goes through many steps, as captured in this diagram, which we borrowed from the Statewide Poverty Action Network. For an interactive introduction to the tools available at leg.wa.gov for checking the status of your bills, see this cookbook. Our lobbyist meets with each working group and can help to clarify where our priority bills are in the process. The deadlines for the legislative process are posted, called cut-off dates.
