* "It is the Duty of the Senators to Protect the Liberty of the People"
-- this Latin inscription is in the Senate Chamber in large gold letters above the Podium

California State Senate User's Guide and Tutorial

IF YOU SPOT ANY ERRORS OR THINGS THAT NEED CLARIFICATION, PLEASE NOTIFY US BY E-MAIL: 
    MAIL TO: News.Editor@sen.ca.gov
    SUBJECT: WWW Tutorial
       TEXT: Please identify the chapter and section that needs
             attention and then describe the problem.

             Thanks -- the editors

Just exactly what the California State Legislature does and how it does it may seem mysterious to interested citizens who must rely on newspaper reports or 60-second television stories for their information about the lawmaking process.

While the legislature's meetings are all open to the public and both the text of bills and the staff analyses of legislation are widely available, it can still be difficult, especially for those of you who live outside Sacramento, to get the information you need to participate effectively in the lawmaking process.

This is changing. Today, if you have access to a computer and modem, you have access to a wealth of information about how the lawmaking process and legislation as well as a simple way of communicating your views and concerns to your elected representatives.

This document gives you an overview of the legislative information now available to the public over the Internet plus instructions for how to get that information.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Chapter 1. Getting on the Internet

    Chapter 2. Getting to the California State Legislature via Internet

    Chapter 3. User Guides: Getting the Information You Need

    Chapter 4. The Lawmaking Process

    Chapter 5. Legislation

    Chapter 6. Senators

    Chapter 7. Committees

    Chapter 8. Getting Help and Finding out about Changes

    Appendix 1: Sessions

    Appendix 2: Bill IDs

    Appendix 3: Glossary

    Appendix 4: Selecting Keywords for Searches

Chapter 1. GETTING ON THE INTERNET:

1. You need a personal computer and a modem

2. You need a connection to the Internet
A variety of companies (Prodigy, CompuServe, America Online, Netcom, etc.) sell access to the Internet. Some charge a flat fee, others charge by the hour or byte. Shop around. You can also sometimes get free access through some universities, colleges, and public libraries.

3. There area various connections to the Internet
Each service provider offers different tools or types of access: E-mail, World Wide Web (WWW), Gopher, FTP, Telnet, etc. The E-mail, gopher or WWW tools give you the easiest access to legislation information (FTP works but it is less user-friendly and Telnet won't get you here)

Chapter 2. GETTING TO THE CALIFORNIA STATE LEGISLATURE VIA INTERNET:

How you get to the California State Legislature on the Internet depends on the tools you have. For some of you, these addresses are enough to get you started:

GOPHER:
Point your Gopher to: gopher.sen.ca.gov

If your Gopher does not have an option to point to a particular domain reference, then locate the gopher menu option Gopher Jewels/, and follow this trail of options:Government/, State Government/, California Legislature Gopher/.

WWW:
URL: http:://www.sen.ca.gov/

E-Mail: 
     MAIL TO: senate-news@sen.ca.gov
     SUBJECT: doesn't matter
        TEXT: help

FTP

FTP to: ftp.sen.ca.gov

Chapter 3. USER GUIDES: GETTING THE INFORMATION YOU NEED:

You are viewing the interactive (HTML) version of the user's guide and tutorial. This guide is also available as a retrievable document. There is a separate user's guide for users of WWW, for Gopher users, and for E-mail users. You can obtain a copy of any of those versions using e-mail:

     MAIL TO: senate-news@sen.ca.gov
     SUBJECT: doesn't matter
        TEXT: get access guides www_user_guide.txt
              get access guides gopher_user_guide.txt
              get access guides senate-news_user_guide.txt

In addition to the information you can view on-line, there are categories of information that you can "subscribe" to (at no cost). When you "subscribe" to information it will automatically be sent to you as it is produced, arriving at your computer as an e-mail message: 

MAIL TO: senate-news@sen.ca.gov
SUBJECT: doesn't matter
   TEXT: subscribe ...

     (see the document senate-news_user_guide.txt for the rest of 
      the text message -- it depends on what you are subscribing to)

Chapter 4. THE LAWMAKING PROCESS:

To be enacted into law, a measure must be approved by the appropriate policy and fiscal committees in both the 40-member Senate and 80-member Assembly, and receive enough votes from the entire membership of both houses to pass. Then it is sent to the Governor who may veto the bill or sign it into law. (See Diagram)

A bill might take a year or more to move through this process. During that time, there is ample opportunity for citizens to express their opinions and concerns and to influence legislation.

The following information, available via the Internet, will help you follow the process:

Section 4.1 Senate Daily File:
Tells you what bills are scheduled to be heard in Senate committee or on the Senate Floor on that day.
Section 4.2 Assembly Daily File:
Gives you the same information for the Assembly's daily schedule.
Section 4.3 Legislative Calendar:
Gives you the key dates and legislative deadlines for the current two year legislative session; the last day to introduce bills, when bills must move out of committee, the last day for the Governor to sign or veto bills, etc.
Section 4.4 Description of the Legislative Process
An overview of the processes involved in a bill becoming law and the various documents that result from that process.
Section 4.5 Glossary of legislative terms

Section 4.6 Senate Rules:
The procedural rules that govern the Senate
Section 4.7 Assembly Rules:
The procedural rules that govern the Assembly
Section 4.8 Joint Rules:
The procedural rules that govern the legislative process.
Section 4.9 Television Schedule:
Since the Senate televises all the Senate Floor Sessions and most committee hearings, you may be able to watch Senate proceedings on your local cable station. Information about which cable operators carry the legislative programming, which events are scheduled to be televised, where tapes are archived, and how to order dubs is accessible via the Internet.

You can subscribe to the Senate television schedule by sending an e-mail message: 


     MAIL TO: senate-news@sen.ca.gov
     SUBJECT: doesn't matter
        TEXT: subscribe sen tv

Chapter 5. LEGISLATION:

A tremendous amount of information about legislation is now accessible to the public via Internet. You can find the following information about each bill.

Section 5.1 Bill Text:
Complete text of bills with annotations to identify material added/removed due to amendments
Section 5.2 Bill History:
Chronological listing of legislative activity for each bill (where the bill was heard, if amended, approved, etc.)
Section 5.3 Bill Status:
Current location of a bill and pending action
Section 5.4 Bill Analyses:
Staff reports describing the history and impact of the legislation and arguments of the groups supporting and opposing the bill
Section 5.5 Votes:
Record of votes in committee and on the floor
Section 5.6 Vetoes:
Text of Governor's veto message
Section 5.7 Bill Tracking:
You can "subscribe" to a bill which means that you will automatically be sent the above information on each bill you subscribe to. To subscribe, send an e-mail message (the examples below illustrate the format): subscribe bill sb_1234 
    MAIL TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
    SUBJECT: doesn't matter
       TEXT: subscribe bill ab_2345
             subscribe bill ajr_4
Section 5.8 Bill Searching:
If you don't know the bill number of the legislation you are interested in, you can search by key word or code section number. The computer will return a list of all bills that contain the key word you specify. For example, if you specified "gun", you would get a list of all current bills that contain "gun" in the text.
Section 5.9 Index of bills:
You can get an index of bills by author (with bill number and topic information) or by bill number (showing author and topic information).
Section 5.10 Chaptered Bills (Statutes):
After legislation has been signed into law and chaptered, it is referred to as a statute. You can get the text of a chaptered bill via Internet.
Section 5.11 California Codes:
You can get the text of the California Codes (The laws of California are organized by subject matter into 29 codes; i.e. the Civil Code, the Insurance Code, etc.) over the Internet.
Section 5.12 California Constitution:
You can also get the text of the California Constitution.
Section 5.13 Issue Briefs and Reports:
The Senate Office of Research (SOR) produces bipartisan reports, analyses, and issue briefs on issues of concern to Californians and the Legislature. You can also subscribe to SOR reports by sending an e-mail message.

Chapter 6. SENATORS

Information about each of the forty State Senators is available to the public over the Internet.

Section 6.1 Who is your Senator?
Not sure who represents you in the Senate? You can easily find out by using the zip code search: Send an e-mail message with your zip code in the subject line: 
    MAIL TO: finger@sen.ca.gov 
    SUBJECT: zip code 
       TEXT: doesn't matter
Section 6.2 Senator Profiles
If you already know the name of your Senator, you can find a profile of pertinent information about him/her: occupation, party affiliation, district number, committee memberships, Capitol and District Office addresses and phone numbers, legislation he/she is authoring, etc.
Section 6.3 Senator Publications:
Some Senators also post press releases, policy positions, legislative updates, etc. on the Internet. You can view these documents on-line or you can subscribe to a Senator's information by topic. Every time that Senator posts a press release, for example, it will automatically be sent to you as e-mail.
Section 6.4 Senator E-Mail Addresses:
Some Senators have established e-mail addresses. All Senator e-mail addresses follow the same format as shown in this example:
senator.lockyer@sen.ca.gov
Section 6.5 Senate Staff E-Mail Addresses:
You can find the public e-mail addresses of Members or staff by sending an e-mail message: 
    MAIL TO: Finger@sen.ca.gov  
    SUBJECT: partial name or office reference 
       TEXT: doesn't matter 

    Example: 

    MAIL TO: Finger@sen.ca.gov  
    SUBJECT: Education 
       TEXT: doesn't matter

Chapter 7. COMMITTEES

Policy committee hearings are the forums for public input, the best place for citizens to make their feelings known about legislation. Legislation is heard in Standing Committees which meet on a regular basis throughout the year. Many standing committees have Subcommittees that work on particular issues. Select Committees and Special Committees study issues and problems in order to develop longer range solutions. Joint Committees have membership from both houses and consider issues of joint concern.

Section 7.1 List of Committees:
Via the Internet, you can get a list of all Senate and Assembly committees, plus for each committee you can get the membership, the chair and vice chair, the committee's policy jurisdiction, meeting schedule, the committee staff, and the committee office phone number and address.
Section 7.2 Committee Publications:
Some committees may also make committee agendas, reports, or transcripts available on the Internet. You can view these documents on-line or you can subscribe to them.

Chapter 8. GETTING HELP AND FINDING OUT ABOUT CHANGES

Section 8.1 To Find Out About Changes or Updates:
We continue to change and improve the way Legislative information is organized for the Internet. If you would like to be kept informed of these changes, you can subscribe by sending this e-mail message: 

    MAIL TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
    SUBJECT: doesn't matter
       TEXT: subscribe access updates
Section 8.2 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
This is a set of documents containing answers to frequently asked questions about how to find legislative information on the Internet. You can go on-line to review these documents and/or you can subscribe by sending an e-mail message: 

    MAIL TO: Senate-News@sen.ca.gov
    SUBJECT: doesn't matter
       TEXT: subscribe access faqs

If You Have a Specific Question for which you have not found an answer in the FAQs or Access Updates, you may e-mail your question to:
news.editor@sen.ca.gov