A Step-By-Step Guide to Researching Legislation on the Arkansas General Assembly Website

John C. Davis

The Arkansas General Assembly gaveled into a general session last month. This semester, I have the privilege of teaching Arkansas Politics to a wonderful group of students, and we’ve been closely following the legislative process out of Little Rock. I wanted to share with my students a step-by-step guide on how to research and track legislation in real time and thought this might be of use to a broader audience, too. Have you ever read about a piece of legislation in the newspaper and wondered how you might be able to follow the process of that bill becoming a law? It’s true, that Arkansas is fortunate to have some wonderful sources covering the state legislature (click here for a short list of helpful sources I have collected), but did you know you could track legislation yourself? The Arkansas General Assembly boasts an accessible website for looking up bills and a free bill-tracking tool that provides you with the up-to-date status of legislation you have selected to follow and email updates.

Here is a quick guide for how you might navigate the General Assembly website, track bills of interest to you, and receive regular email updates on the status of the legislation:

Step One—access the General Assembly website and note the search bar on the left side of the homepage where you can simply enter a bill number for more information including the text of the legislation, the status of the legislation, the text of any amendments made to the bill and vote counts.

Note: be sure to include “HB” or “SB” and follow with the bill number (no spaces).

Once you’ve entered the bill number in the “Search for Bills” box, you’ll be directed to the bill and its legislative history. For example, I entered “SB207” and this is the current information for this bill:

Should you want to “track” this bill—to follow its progress through the legislative process—and receive regular email updates on the status of the legislation, you can click on the “Bills” tab in the top middle of the page and then select “Bill Tracking” to create a free account here with my email and a password.

From there, you’ll receive regular email updates in your inbox and be up to date on the status of legislation—and be a more informed citizen!