Bill Status
Bill Status is used to record and track the historical
status of bill as it moves through the legislative process. To facilitate the entry of status,
parameters are used to allow for variable inputs, such as a member or committee
name. When the Clerk adds a status,
he/she is guided from one parameter to the next and is prompted at each step to
enter a value or to select from a list, as would be the case when picking a
committee. A status can have any number
of parameters. The use of parameters can
significantly reduce the number of base statuses a legislature needs. Status can be built in advance of a
legislative day by entering it into the "Q". Status will remain in the "Q"
until it is released. For a bill, status
is listed in chronological order and an individual status can be simply moved
up or down in the list to satisfy any reordering requirements. Status can be automatically created from the
Calendar, Journal, or Message modules. Likewise,
status can be used to create Journal entries.
This option promotes
standardization while decreasing the overall work effort. In addition, if the indexes in the bound
Journal are based upon status, we can significantly facilitate the automatic
creation of those indexes. This can relate
to an enormous time savings in year end processing.
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