MDN Bill Retrieval

Year: Bill(s):
Subject: Sponsor:
Status: Descript.:
In Budget Display in Separate Window Major Bill(s) or

Missouri Digital News began maintaining a digital database legislation in Missouri's General Assembly in 1985. That was well before development of the World Wide Web and even before the legislature itself had a a digital database its bills.

So, here, you have longest continuing online record of what has been before the Missouri legislature. The database originated as an in-house resource for MDN reporters. In those early years, there was no expectation the information would be made available to the public. Indeed, there was no way to do so.

There are several options to filter out from the hundreds of bills introduced in a legislative session bills that are of interest to you:

Year: Searches are limited to a specific year. In any given year, well more than 1,000 bills will have been introduced. Special sessions are in a seperate group because the legislature does not follow the sequential number of bills with the last bill of the regular session, but instead start with #1.
Bills: You can retrieve a specific bill by entering the bill type (HB, SB, HJR or SJR) followed, without a space, by the bill number. HB1 would retrieve House Bill 1. You can enter more than one bill. So, "SB100 HJR20" would retrieve Senate Bill 100 followed by House Joint Resolution 20. This field is NOT case sensitive.
Subject: The subject categories vary from year to year and reflects the subject of the most significant or news-worthy aspect of the bill. In the early years, MDN would assign a bill to only one subject. Now, however, a bill can be filed under mutiple categories. Also, in early years, only significant bills were assigned to a category.
The All category will not restrict display of bills based on the category.
Sponsor: Only the main sponsor is listed for a bill. This field does not include co-sponsors nor co-signers. The search is case insensitive.
This field is in the form of last-name, first-name. You do not need to enter the full last name, just the starting letters. For example, jo would retrieve bills sponsored by Jones. But the search begins at the start of the sponsor field. So jo would not retrieve bills sponsored by Smith, John.
In other words, when you enter something to search in this field, you must start with the legislator's last name.
The name is the legislator's name as of the time the bill was introduced. It does not reflect subsequent name changes due to marriage or divorce -- as as happened in a few years.
Status: This is the current status of the bill. For example, H Perfection would indicate the bill is pending on the House perfection calendar.
In 2021, the House adopted a rule by which the House could refer a bill on the 3rd Reading Calendar to the House Legislative Review Committee, preventing any chamber action on the bill until cleared by the committee. Any such bill will have a status of H 3rd Read - Legislative Review. It's similar to the in-budget status (see below).
The All category will not restrict display of bills based on status.
In recent years, the legislature has become extremely wordy in naming it's committees. As a result, committee names have shortened.
Committee approval of a bill reporting it to the full chamber is not recorded for a bill until the committee approval officially is reported to the chamber and recorded in the journal. It is up to a committee chair as to when, if ever, a committee's approval is reported to the chamber.
In recent years, the House speaker has delayed assigning many bills to committee until it is too late in the legislative session for the bills to clear the General Assembly. The Constitution requires a minimum of five days for the legislature to pass a bill. So, a bill assigned to committee four days before the legislative adjourns effectively is dead.
The status of a bill in MDN's database for a bill assigned to committee on the last couple of days of a session will not indicate committee assignment since the assignment is meaningless.
These are bills the speaker has decided to prevent even a committeee or has determined has no chance of passage making even a committee hearing meaningless.
In 2021, House rules added a new wrinkle. The rules established a Legislative Review Committee to which a bill on the perfection calendar can be referred, blocking any further action on the bill by the House until/unless the committee clears the bill.
Descript: This is the description for a bill written by MDN's director, Phill Brooks, after he has read the bill.
The description focuses on the most significant and/or news worthy aspect of the bill. Amendments added to a bill that include unrelated subjects may not be included in the description unless the bill clears the legislature.
Because of the recent trend of the legislature to attach completely unrelated aspects to a bill, it is impossible to provide a description of every component that may have been attached. Do a search of 2019 or 2021 bills for the word unrelated to understand how frequent this trend has become.
Many of these amendments are in clear violation of the state Consitution and state Supreme Court decisions that bills are limited to single subject of the original bill. In other words, the legislature violates the Constitution when it adds an amendment that goes beyond the original, introduced version of the bill. And, the Constitution is violated when a bill covers more than one subject.
In Budget: Check this box to limit your search to bills that are assigned to a committee that reviews the costs of a bill prior to third reading. Both the House and Senate have committees that must approve any bill before the chamber can take a 3rd reading vote on the bill.
Display in Separate Window: If checked (the opening option), this will place the display bills meeting your search criteria or the calendar you selected in a separate window. Otherwise, the list will be displayed in a small window at the bottom of the search options.
If you're searching for just one or two bills, it might be more convenient to display the bill(s) in the small window at the bottom of your browser.
This option will not be displayed on mobile devices. Because of the limited screen size, bills always are displayed in a separate window.
Major Bills: Check this box to limit your search to bills MDN's director considered worthy of coverage. In any given year, less than about one-fourth of the bills introduced are marked for possible coverage.
Back when MDN had dozens of journalism students covering the legislature, this field was used to help students focus on the bills of importance to cover. That approach continues in the decision of which bills to designate as major.
The factors affecting designation as a major bills reflect the complicated process by which journalists decide whether something is worthy of coverage.
For legislative measures, those factors include the public interest in the subject matter, the impact on the state and, finally, the likelyhood that the bill has any chance of advancing in the legislative process.
As result, there can be quite a few bills not designated as major although they deal with the same subjects as bills that were designated as major. There are a couple of reasons:
1. In a highly partisan General Assembly, there is little chance minority-party bills are going to make much progress. In fact, in the House, many minority-party bills are not even assigned to a committee until after the constitutional deadline for action on bills has passed.
2. Some legislators will introduce a bill on a topic when it is clear that topic will be addressed by a legislator with more influence to move the bill throught the General Assembly -- such a committee chair or legislative leader.

Search: Click this button to search for bills from the information you entered above;
Reset: This button simply clears all the search categories you have entered and any bill calendar you selected.
Help: Obviously calls up this help page
Calendars: Will call up a new page with a list of legislative calendars in the year you have chosen to select for displaying the list of bills/joint resolutions on the calendar you selected.
A calendar is just a list of bills in the order in which they were placed on the calendar such as being reported out of commmittee or perfected for the 3rd reading calendar.
From the calendar-selection page, click the Calendar Help option from the top-left menu icon for more information about calendars.