By Joel Campbell

| Tribune Columnist

While the Utah Legislature has a very good website that can help citizens monitor and interact with their representative government, there’s not much of a user’s manual. Here’s an attempt to rectify that situation as Utah lawmakers prepare to meet between Jan. 24 and March 10.

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Getting started » All things legislative begin at le.utah.gov. Here is the starting page to monitor hearings, look up bills and find your representatives. A nice site map can be found at le.utah.gov/sitemap.htm. To get specific information about the 2011 session, go to the session page at le.utah.gov/~2011/2011.htm. There is a list of numbered bills, a list of committees, links to audio feeds of House and Senate floor debates and a live feed of the respective bodies’ reading calendars. The reading calendars are the list of bills being considered by the full House or Senate usually after approval by a committee.

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Who’s my legislator? » The legislative website sports a very easy look-up tool to find the representative and senator from your area. By clicking on le.utah.gov/GIS/findDistrict.jsp one can enter an address with ZIP code and the names and links to the contact information for your lawmakers will appear. Once you click through to lawmakers’ information pages, there are links to their e-mail addresses, phone numbers, the bills they are sponsoring, committees they serve on and their conflict-of-interest form.

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Finding bills of interest » If you have a particular interest in a certain topic you can look at a list of pre-selected keywords at le.utah.gov/asp/billsintro/index.asp?year=2011GS or use a search engine at this link le.utah.gov/dtForms/2011bills.html. You can also use the first link to find bills sponsored by a certain legislator or by the committee that will hear the bill. You can also browse through a full list of bills approved for public view at le.utah.gov/session/2011/bills.htm. Just a warning: The list expands almost daily during the first weeks of the session.

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Tracking bills » Bills are coded for the body where they originate. Senate bills are coded with "SB" and a number. Similarly, House bills are coded "HB." Once you’ve found a bill, the Legislature’s website provides a unique tracking service that notifies anyone interested via e-mail when a bill has been modified or is moving up the approval chain from committee to floor debate and then to the companion body. Getting to this service is not the most intuitive. Once you find a bill of interest you should discover a central information page for each bill.

For example, HB12 information page can be viewed at le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0012.htm. From that page, one can view the bill status, including committee and floor votes, read the bill text in three different formats and sign up for the "Web Watch" service. By placing an e-mail address in the Web Watch box at the end of the bill page, users will receive e-mail notifications whenever the bill status changes, including when it’s scheduled for the all-important committee hearing or floor debate. If you are tracking several bills, you can also build a list of bills and see their current status at le.utah.gov/asp/billtrack/track.asp.

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What’s on the agenda? » You can also monitor the daily work of legislative committees by viewing scheduled meetings and agendas at the calendar page, le.utah.gov/asp/interim/cal.asp. The blue link brings up an agenda. The green link brings up a committee page that contains scheduled time and place, agenda, audio and minutes of meetings, and links to related public documents. During the session, most legislative committee hearings are broadcast via live audio feed via the Web, as is the debate from the Senate and House floors. The main calendar and committee pages will have links to the audio feed when they are live.

Because most of us don’t have time to monitor all that’s happening on Capitol Hill, The Tribune and other news media provide an important watchdog function of the Legislature.

Joel Campbell is a former reporter and current associate professor of communications at Brigham Young University. His reporting does not necessarily reflect the views of BYU. He writes on First Amendment and open-government issues for The Tribune. He can be reached at foiguy@gmail.com.