Adopted resolutions are generally used to state the position of the legislature on a particular issue and do not carry the force of law.

Citation

A reference that identifies a particular case, law review article, book, statute or other resource. Citation standards vary from state to state.

Description

This search field can be used to search for a specific word or phrase within the description of a year-end status record.

Effective Date

The exact date the legislation went into effect.

Enacted Legislation

Legislation is considered enacted after passing in both the House and the Senate (in states with bicameral legislatures) and being signed into law by the governor or voted into law by an override vote of the governor’s veto.

Enactment Date

The exact date the legislation was enacted or the resolution was adopted.

Filters

Filters are conditions applied in a search to limit the results. The filters include such fields as years, quarters, search terms, and sponsors.

Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) Codes

The National Institute of Standards and Technology issues codes for the identification of the States, the District of Columbia and the outlying areas of the United States, and associated areas.
Click here for more information about FIPS codes.

General Search Term

This search field can be used to search for a specific word or phrase within the provisions and enforcement text or notes fields of a legislation record.

Keywords

Each legislation and year-end status record has at least one keyword assigned to it. These keywords can be used to search for sets of records on a specific topic.

Keywords are assigned at three different levels. Primary keywords encompass a broad topic such as Tobacco. Secondary keywords narrow the topic to an intermediate level of specificity, such as Clean Indoor Air, within the Tobacco primary keyword. Tertiary keywords are the most specific level of keywords and refer to a very narrow topic, such as records related to Bars within Clean Indoor Air within Tobacco topics.

Legislation Record

A legislation record contains information about a precodified piece of law. Although resolutions are not generally codified, this term also refers to adopted resolutions.

Quarter

The four 3-month periods into which the legislative year is divided are called quarters (i.e. January - March, April - June, July - September, and October - December).

Query Criteria

The filters and keywords you select to perform a search are collectively called the query criteria and are displayed at the top of each page of search results and record detail pages.

RECNO

This unique record number is used to identify a legislation record.

Reference

The number used to identify a year-end status record. Topically related records from the same State are assigned the same reference number. A year-end status record can contain multiple sets of citations for each year.

Status

A legislation record can be either for enacted legislation or adopted resolution.

Stream of Legislation

A bill and the group of laws (if any) created to amend and/or repeal the original bill are collectively referred to as a stream of legislation.

Year-End Status Record

A year-end status record is a snapshot of a stream of codified legislation on the last day of the year for which it is reported and includes citation(s) to the specific code sections(s) in which the provision text is found.