How To Write A Bill For State Legislature; Template

Drafting Bills

2020 Bill Drafting Manual
Bureau Bill Drafting Workshop - June one, 2012
- Presentation Slides
- Handouts
Bill Drafting Process for Legislators
From Idea to Introduction: A Guide for Legislators to Drafting and Sponsoring Bills: HTML PDF
Bill Draft Request Form
2021 Bill Summary
2019 Neb Summary
5-Session Pecker Summaries
Staff Expertise Listing

Who May Request Bills

Legislators and committees of the Legislature may officially request the drafting of bills. Legislative Services Partition staff draft all bills to ensure they comply with bill drafting requirements.

Legislators may request neb drafts subject to the following:

Holdover senators (those not required to run for re-election) may request nib drafts at any fourth dimension; pecker drafting begins in hostage the September preceding a session. List of holdover senators and unopposed legislators. After candidate-filing for the Legislature closes or after the primary election, legislators may brainstorm to request bill drafts if they are running unopposed.
After the general election, all legislators, including holdover senators, unopposed legislators, and newly elected legislators, may asking an unlimited number of bills or resolutions to be drafted before five p.k. on December 5 preceding a regular session.
After 5 p.one thousand. on December 5, legislators may request no more than 7 bill drafts, at least 5 of which must be requested before the session convenes.
After December 5, legislators may grant unused bill draft requests to other legislators.

These restrictions do non apply to bills proposed by the Code Commissioner in the Legislative Services Division, bills or resolutions requested by continuing committees, or bills or resolutions requested on behalf of newly elected land officials.

Bill Draft Deadlines

There are deadlines past which legislators must request the drafting of certain types of bills:

Bill Type	Legislative 24-hour interval (5 p.one thousand.)
General bills & resolutions	12
Revenue bills	17
Commission bills & resolutions	36
Committee revenue bills	62
Committee bills implementing provisions of a general appropriations human activity	75
Interim study resolutions	75

How to Request Pecker Drafts

To request a bill draft, legislators should fill up out a "Bill Drafting Request" course (besides available from the Legislative Services Division). Each bill draft asking is assigned to a staff chaser or inquiry analyst based on experience and workload. The first 5 requests legislators submit are drafted for legislators before a drafter may work on a legislator'due south sixth request. Click here for more information on prioritizing bill requests. The drafter is an impartial technician whose function is to interpret a legislator's objectives and policy ideas into clear, concise, and unambiguous linguistic communication. Legislators should submit bill typhoon request forms to:

Montana Legislative Services Division
P.O. Box 201706
Room 110, Land Capitol
Helena, MT 59620-1706
(406) 444-3064
Fax: (406) 444-3036
E-mail: teverts@mt.gov

Nib Drafting Procedure for Legislators

For State Agency Use

Microsoft Discussion Bill Drafting Macros and Templates: The Microsoft Give-and-take templates may be used to format bills, insert standard language, and retrieve MCA sections.

The Word templates require a connection to the Net to retrieve Beak Sections. The Word template may exist opened from the Cyberspace or downloaded, y'all will relieve the resulting bill locally under a dissimilar name. Read the post-obit Pecker Drafting Template User Guide earlier installing and running the Microsoft Word Macro enabled Template.

For Aid Using These Templates: Contact the It Services Sectionalization (ITSD), Section of Administration, 406-444-2000.

MS Discussion version 2013 and 2016: Bill Drafting Template User Guide - Template (Delight use Edge in downloading the Word Template, there are issues with Chrome downloading files. Thank you.)

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