This could be very cool: “Denver-based Web site tracks legislative bills in all 50 states.”
Scott Yates and Peter Jones want to make work easier for lobbyists, lawmakers, political junkies and anybody who keeps tabs on bills meandering through a state legislature. The two are launching a Denver Internet company, LgDb, to allow users to track bills in all 50 states via one Web-based format rather than going to the individual Web sites of each state.
It’s free for anyone wanting to call up a bill pending in Colorado or elsewhere to view the measure’s contents, track its progress and see its sponsors. Users also can link to newspaper articles and blog postings related to a bill. By plugging in a keyword, such as “health care,” users also can look at similar legislation pending in other states.
Lobbyists, trade associations and others can pay $450 a year for special features. Paid users, for example, can create a “bill sheet” to keep tabs on various bills without having to cut and paste information from other Web sites into a Word document or spreadsheet….
Paid subscribers also can be automatically alerted to changes in bills – either their status or language – that they’ve searched for previously in the database. LgDb will save the results of those searches and use them to run new searches automatically.
In addition, the service can zap an e-mail to alert users about pending action or changes related to a particular bill.
Here’s the site. If you have a few minutes, poke around and let us know what you think. If the functionality is good enough, we’d certainly consider using some of our ad revenue to bring the fancy features to BMG.
UPDATE: from the comments, Scott Yates gives us some MA-specific info:
We will have Mass., and all the other states, but we don’t have it yet. As anyone who’s looked at the site for the Commonwealth and then the site for just about any other state knows, you have one of the hardest to decipher.
We’re getting good at it, though, and should have it in the next couple of weeks. I’ll try to remember to send you a note when we get Mass. working.
Feel free to pester me using the contact form on the web page if we don’t move fast enough.
-Scott
Cool. We’ll keep everyone posted.
FURTHER UPDATE: They’re looking for people to help them keep up to date on bill info that is not electronically available, and I’m guessing that they might need that kind of assistance in MA more than in most other states. If you’re looking for that kind of work, give them a shout.
but could’t find any MA legislation.
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Sounds like a great concept idea though. I hope they can pull it all together.
Every state should have an easily accessed db for tracking legislation. But what’s nice about this particular set-up is that it would allow you to quickly search for parallel efforts around the country – so you don’t necessarily have to re-invent the wheel when crafting a particular law.
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That said, I couldn’t find any Massachusetts stuff either.
The newspaper article said that they’re going to be fully functional in a month, so maybe it’s not completely on-line yet. Definitely bears watching — I really love the idea of the site.
Hey, thanks for picking up on that story from Denver, and good job writing it up!
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We will have Mass., and all the other states, but we don’t have it yet. As anyone who’s looked at the site for the Commonwealth and then the site for just about any other state knows, you have one of the hardest to decipher.
<
p>
We’re getting good at it, though, and should have it in the next couple of weeks. I’ll try to remember to send you a note when we get Mass. working.
<
p>
Feel free to pester me using the contact form on the web page if we don’t move fast enough.
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p>
-Scott
Sounds like LgDb could become the “Google Earth of politics”.
MegaVote is another service that is much simpler, but still useful.