This page lists State Legislative Websites, including user reviews of the websites, pointers to State Legislators that blog and other sites where there are discussions of State Legislation.

Alabama

http://www.legislature.state.al.us/

You can use it to look up your state Senator or Representative and get the text and status of current bills. There is supposed to be live audio of the sessions, but I don’t know people who have been able to get it to work. Alabama definitely don't have video unless a news organization is there. The biggest gripe with the Alabama website is that a lot of the features only work if you are using MS Windows and Internet Explorer. People have complained about that, but so far no change.

Alaska

http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/index.php
This site, like many other legislative websites has a lot of abbreviations that may intimidate people who are not insiders. It has a very nice Bill Tracking Management Facility (BTMF). You can monitor your BTMF account with this RSS feed. However, it is a little complicated to set up folders to follow bills in BTMF

Arizona

http://www.azleg.gov/
Provides a calendar and the ability to search bills. It does not appear to have any facilities to subscribe to bills or calendars. Nor does it appear to have any nice way of tracking a single bill.

Arkansas

http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/
The site has limited search capabilities and is very temperamental about the browser being used. However, House Majority Leader, Steve Harrelson has his own blog, http://www.steveharrelson.com/blog/ Under the Dome

California

http://www.legislature.ca.gov/

Calendar, daily file, but you can’t subscribe to the calendar.
You can search bills, get votes and subscribe to bills via email. However, many domains seem to be blocked. The site uses lots of abbreviations, making it hard for non-insiders to figure out.

Note: Not a lot of people are aware of what is going on in the State Legislature
http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/06/how_do_californ_1.html

Colorado

http://www.leg.state.co.us/
You can search for bills and get votes. It can be a little difficult to navigate the system and there does not appear to be a way to subscribe to bills via email and/or RSS.

Connecticut

http://www.cga.ct.gov/
You can search bills, read their text and amendments, track their progress, see the votes, and subscribe to them via email. There is NOT an RSS feed of the bills or the bills progress. It is a decent tool for doing research, but not great for interactive involvement in the legislative process. I do not know if there is any easy way of tracking the budget.

State Senator Bill Finch has a blog at http://www.billfinch.org/blog/ and State Representative David McCluskey has a blog at http://ctprogressivedemocrat.blogspot.com/

Discussions can also be found at http://www.myleftnutmeg.com and http://www.ctlocapolitics.net where State Legislators often come to live blog or post comments.

CT was actually the first state to actively fund making legislative info available on the web. I think it was about 1995. Most states out and out laughed at them at the time.

Delaware

http://www.legis.state.de.us/Legislature.nsf/?Opendatabase

The Delaware Legislative site is based on Lotus Notes, which gives it a lot of programmability. They have an RSS feed to subscribe to legislation in various forms, as well as the ability to send a bill to a friend via email. It has a clean crisp look and feel and is easy to navigate.

Florida

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/
The site has a relatively easy to use ability to search bills and see votes. They have video and archived video. There is no apparent easy way to subscribe to bills via email or RSS.

Georgia

http://www.legis.state.ga.us/
The site has a reasonably easy to use ability to search bills and see votes. They have video. There is no apparent easy way to subscribe to bills via email or RSS.

Hawaii

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/
The site provides basic search capabilities. The nicest feature is the ability to subscribe to an RSS feed on the status of individual bills. However, the link always points back to the status summary and there is no apparent way to get information on the votes.

Idaho

http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/index.htm
The site provides a basic search. Each bill is it’s own file with status, including votes, the bill text, and economic impact all combined into a single page. There are no apparent subscription options.

Illinois

http://www.ilga.gov/house/
On first use, it can be a little confusing. There is a section called “My Legislation”. This section requires registration to build queries and only for searches by committees, sponsors, etc. However, the section “Legislation and Laws” provides basic search functionality. Votes are accessible, but only as PDF files and apparently only floor votes, and not committee votes are available. There are no apparent subscription options.

Indiana

http://www.in.gov/legislative/
It contains a basic search of bills with latest action, votes, etc. It's all in .pdf format and more or less scanned from the records on the House/Senate floor.

No RSS for anything, at least that I have ever seen. The budget is handled just like any other bill. The website is useful if you can navigate it, but not all that intuitive.

Iowa

http://www.legis.state.ia.us
Their site can be relatively helpful, but a lot of the features require updates from staffs and other groups that aren't necessarily as focused on providing up-to-date content online as they are in paper form or in person at the state capitol.

The legislature provides live audio-feeds of the daily sessions in both the state house and state senate, however there is usually no audio for committee hearings. Access to a daily calendar and other information is ok, but there are no RSS feeds or other live updates one can receive other than soliciting to daily email lists from different groups. Some information arrives the morning of a certain days events, other information comes in a digest form the day after events have happened.

They say they have a way to "track legislation" but that requires work and research on the user's part constantly, as getting email updates or other forms of information require searches, etc., as well as the awkward transition from in-screen text files to PDFs and back and forth.

While there is a lot of information out there, it is not the most accessible or the most well-organized.

Kansas

http://www.kslegislature.org/legsrv-legisportal/index.do
The quick search of bills on the front of the Kansas Legislature site provides the ability to track bills, but a good text search of bills is not readily available. They have services to track bills that they charge for, including a tool called “Lobbyist in a box”. There is the ability to email text of bills, but it is hard to find much useful information on the site.

Kentucky

http://www.lrc.state.ky.us/legislation.htm
Search capabilities are available to registered users. Registration is free and is available to people outside of Kentucky. Finding bills and votes appears cumbersome.

Michigan

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/
They do have an RSS feed, but you get all bills. It can't be limited to watching a bill, or monitoring one committee, or one legislator - at least far as I know.

Minnesota

http://www.leg.state.mn.us/
Pretty easy to use, great search engines to track bills, find your reps and the district you live in.

Missouri

http://www.moga.state.mo.us/
The site has a reasonably easy to use ability to search bills. Information about votes are not readily available, nor are subscriptions.
Discussions can be found at http://missouripolitics.net/

Nevada

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/
The Nevada Legislature's web site includes session information links, interim session links, as well as links to members of the Assembly and the State Senate. The page also provides access to the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau. http://www.leg.state.nv.us/lcb/lcb.cfm

New York

http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg
NY's Assembly website has a page where you can look up bills. (The state Senate also has a page, but it stinks, and you can get Senate bills from the Assembly page.) Anyone can access all the info available -- Assembly bills start with an "A" before the number (e.g. A5724), and Senate bills start with an "S". Of our three major levels of government (national, state, city), the state's website is by far the worst. You can't search for bills from past sessions, and you generally can't find out who voted which way on most bills that do get a vote. This, I believe, is a function of our dysfunctional government (pun intended -- sorry about that).

If accessing the state budget is possible online, they keep it well hidden. The major problem is that the budget is always determined behind closed doors among the "three men in a room," and transparency isn't one of the top priorities. It took a series of lawsuits to pry loose the list of specific member items (a.k.a. "pork").

Ohio

http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/
The site has a reasonably easy to use ability to search bills. However, the information returned is cumbersome and information about votes are not readily available, nor are subscriptions.
Discussions can be found at http://www.ohiodailyblog.com/

North Dakota

http://www.legis.nd.gov
You can search bills, read their text and amendments, track their progress, see the votes. I don't know if there's a way for people to subscribe. It's all publicly available. After familiarizing yourself with how it's set up, I think it's fairly easy to use. It gets better every year. This year they added live, streaming audio AND video feeds from the floor debates and votes. Various lobbying groups also have websites where they track bills related to their interest(s). Many of those are publicly available.

The budget is at http://www.legis.nd.gov/fiscal/

Texas

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/
It has great search functions and when we are in session, live video of both the floor debates but also committee meetings.

This year, they added the ability for users to subscribe to RSS feeds for filed bills, enrolled bills, committee notices, committee minutes, etc.--the whole nine yards, really. We've also got live video streams, archived video, etc. Really great stuff.

This year, though it took an amendment to the House Rules to accomplish it (don't ask why because I haven't a clue), we also have real-time ability to view amendments as session was going on. This was a real life-saver for those of us who liveblogged a lot of the session.

Also, something else: In the past, you had to wait until the House Journal came out (sometimes two to three days), to see how House members voted on various amendments and bills. Now, in the place for the vote link that usually leads to the House Journal, there is a little pop-up of who voted how (specified as unofficial) which usually pops up within an hour or two of the vote. The Senate has nothing like this, and you still have to wait for their Journal to come out (they'd have to amend their rules to make it happen).

The way the text searches work could use some tweaking, but users love the ability to search by a wide variety of different categories. However, if you explore the search engine, you might see that there is one way to search by subject which could also use tweaking as it uses terms the Legislative Council uses to classify bills and not necessarily what you would use. For example, it can be hard to find CHIP bills if you don't know what you are looking for.

The websites for the individual chambers (and the individual members) leave a lot to be desired. There are no "bios" on many of the State Reps on their pages, poor contact information, etc.

Utah

http://www.le.state.ut.us/
The site has a relatively easy to use search feature for bills. Statuses are easy to read and votes are easy to find. It has the ability to build customized RSS searches which appear very usable and powerful. The site has audio recordings of floor and committee debates, which is also pretty cool.

Two of the most interesting blogs run by legislators are from Utah. Utah Senate President John Valentine posts at http://www.senatesite.com/blog/ “Unofficial Voice of the Utah Senate Majority”. The cost of the blog is covered by the Utah Senate Republicans PAC. Also from Utah is State Representative Steve Urquhart, who blogs at http://steveu.com/blog/

Virginia

http://leg1.state.va.us/

However, many people end up using http://www.richmondsunlight.com/ which is a very user friendly site. Delegates Kris Amundson and Bob Brink have a blog at http://www.7-west.org/

Washington State

http://leg.wa.gov
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget/highlights/default.htm

Washington has a site to be proud of. It's updated about as often as the national legislature sites are, which means it's a few days delayed. The leadership and crews work really hard to put up bills, amendments, and contact info for the various committees. But it still takes people getting in their cars and watching to make sense of how things work.

The budget is available online (http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget/highlights/default.htm), and the Office of Fiscal Management works hard to make it readable by the people.

However, people in Washington have express disappointment that there is no access to video.

West Virginia

http://www.legis.state.wv.us/

West Virginia has an excellent legislative site that really makes it easy to follow both houses when they are in regular or special session. I have been rather impressed with the information available as well as their ability to keep it up to date. There is a significant amount of educational information as well as contact information for all the members of the House of Delegates and the State Senate. Not bad for Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.

Wisconsin

http://www.legis.state.wi.us/
Legislative video is available on Wisconsin Eye, which is fairly new in Wisconsin, http://www.wiseye.org

Other information:

Wikipedia has a pretty good list of State Legislative bodies, and links to there websites. It can be found at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state_legislatures_of_the_United_States

The National Conference of State Legislatures has a comprehensive review of State Legislative Websites. It can be found here:
http://www.ncsl.org/public/leglinks.cfm

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