Imagine missing the vote for a piece of legislation you’ve waited all year to see or missing a committee hearing where you could have impacted the outcome of a bill. This would be incredibly unfortunate, especially if the legislation was going to be influential in your life.
Fortunately, Libertas has you covered. Our website offers a wide range of tools that allow you to keep up to date and stay informed about the happenings at the Capitol.
A good initial place to start is visiting Libertas’s website’s homepage and hovering your mouse over the tab titled Resources. Next, click on the menu item titled Legislation Tracker. The “Legislation Tracker” page can serve as a command center to track legislation as the session progresses.
On this page, you will be presented with a list of legislation that Libertas is either supporting or opposing. Additionally, this page allows you to view updates about legislation such as the vote totals from the Senate and House, what committee a piece of legislation is in, how a committee voted on a bill, and so on.
If you’re interested in a particular type of legislation, no problem, simply click on the Filter by Topic button and select the topic you would like to view.
Once you’ve found a bill that looks interesting, you can hover over it to read a short description of what the bill is about. To read even more about the bill, click on the bill name or number, and an article about the legislation will be brought up.
If you are interested in the sponsor of a bill, click on their name in the sponsor column. You will be redirected to a page that gives you a brief profile of the legislator and a rating of the legislator. This rating reflects how closely the legislator aligns with Libertas. This information can also be found by hovering your mouse over the tab titled Resources and clicking on the drop-down item titled Legislator Profiles.
Additionally, a more detailed summary of how closely each legislator aligns with Libertas and how they have voted on pieces of legislation can be located by hovering your mouse over the tab titled Resources and clicking on the drop-down item titled Legislator Indexes.
To email your representative or the sponsor of a bill, return to the legislative tracking page and find the bill you are interested in. Then, click “Email your Senator/Representative” or “Email the bill sponsor” and fill out the fields requested.
In addition to using Libertas’s website, to effectively follow Utah’s legislative session, it is important to also utilize the Utah State Legislator’s website.
After familiarizing yourself with the website, it is necessary to know how to use the Resources and Calendar tabs at the bottom of the page.
Upon clicking the Resources tab, it will display a grayed box title 2022 General Session. This is where you can find information, including significant dates during the session, a weekly schedule, bill requests, numbered bills, bill tracking, and the “2022 General Session Main Page.” This main page can provide you with links to nearly all the information a person could want about the upcoming session.
The Calendar tab shows an easy-to-read, day-by-day description of the activities, committees, and deadlines that are occurring in the session.
The tabs that fall at the top of the legislature’s website include Legislators, Bills, Codes, Committees, Audits, Budget, and Research and Legal. To follow the legislative session, the Legislators tab, Bills tab, and Committees tab will be particularly important.
The Legislators tab provides information about the individuals who comprise the House and Senate. This tab is also crucial because hovering your mouse over this tab and clicking on the drop-down menu item titled Reading Calendars takes you to a page where you can watch floor debates, see votes on legislation, and track when a bill will be read.
The Bills tab will provide you with additional information about what bills are going to be included in the session. This is also where you can view the full text of a bill.
The Committee’s tab allows one to learn more about each committee. Additionally, by clicking on a specific committee, you can view which legislators are in a committee, what legislation the committee is hearing, and watch committee hearings live.
Now, you should have all the resources necessary to follow this year’s legislative session with ease.
Policy Associate
Ben was a Policy Associate at Libertas Institute.