Florida Legislative History

Rather complete documents are readily available for this time period since 1998. The most glaring omission are minutes, transcripts or audio recordings of committe meetings and floor debates. Some video recordings are now being made available on the Senate site. Audio recordings are also being posted from the committee reference pages.

Any other Recordings must be sought from the committees themselves for the two year period before the current date, and from the State Archives of Florida for any prior periods.

      Last 3-4 Years

Staff Analyses and all other bill information, including Bill History, Related Bills, Bill Text and Amendments, can be found at the Senate Bill Page.

Roughly the same information can be found for House bills at the House of Representatives Bills Information Page. The House page even goes back further in time and allows searches for Senate bills, but the Senate Archives page arguably provides an easier search interface.

      From 1998 to 2010

The Senate Archive site has sections for a Bill page that provides the Bill text, Amendments, Staff Analyses and Vote History on House and Senate bills from 1998 to 2010. Journals, and Committee Publication sections are also included. The Publications include Committee Reports.

Some duplication of information for the same time periods is contained in the Bill Citator, The bill citator also provides a subject index.

      Westlaw and Lexis

This is the only time period where Westlaw material is available. Lexis's coverage goes somewhat further back to the early 1990s.

For the three years from 1997 to 1999 the library has a Compilation of Staff Analyses published by Florida Information Associates.

The CD series is titled Florida legislative history documentation, KFF15 .F56 and is in Reserve.

Due to the binder size, the title is shelved with the audio course CDs. In addition to Staff Analysis the CDs also contain House and Senate Journals for the year.

This time period predates the online posting of bill information by the Legislature. Again, recordings and additional documents would have to be requested from the State Archives.

However, the Compilation of Committee staff analyses KFF15 .F56, consists of microfiche images for the Analyses and some other documentation covering the period from 1988 to 1996.

The title can be accessed in the microforms area, stored in Drawer 4 of Cabinet 5. The fiches are arranged by session law number.

Probative documents and material for the period of the 1970s to 1988 is only available from the State Archives, which ought to have increasingly complete records beginning in the late 1970s when the State Library/State Archives were separated from the Division of Archives, History & Records Management.

The Archive states: "Researchers looking for legislative records from 1969-1973 in particular may find that there is little or no information on specific bills from these years."

Some content is available online in the older Senate Journals and locally in the History of Legislation, LEG.D 3:H 49/ housed in the Green Library, which covers the period 1967 to 1987. The History of Legislation contains daily bill information.

Florida Legislative material began to be officially archived in 1969. Prior to that time what records can be used in Legislative History research would have to be found in the State Archives, with no assurance of availability.

The State Archives explains it this way on their Legislative Committee Records page, "Modern legislative committee records began to be preserved in 1969, following the passage of the new Florida constitution and the creation of permanent committee staffs. Consequently, no modern committee records exist for the years before 1969, and staff analyses and tapes are not available...".

The only information not at the Archives would be the historical Senate Journals.