The Massachusetts legislature is in session for 2025/2026. However, you've likely noticed that many bills are not yet visible in Insight Engine™.
What's going on?
MA uses a temporary instrument, referred to as a "docket", to initially introduce a bill. That's what you'll see on the MA legislature's website right now for many bills. These dockets are identified with an SD or HD. The bill will then be given a permanent bill number, denoted with just an S or H. At that point the docket is removed from the legislature's website since it has been replaced with the permanent instrument.
This unfortunately causes some confusion in our system. Once the dockets disappear from the legislature's website, there is nothing connecting them to the permanent bill. This leads to broken links, inaccurate search results, and ineffective search alerts. While it's not a perfect solution, we wait until the permanent legislative instruments have been added to the legislative website before we import those into our system. That way once you add a bill to your favorites, you can be assured that you'll get the proper updates as that bill progresses through the legislative process.
When will the MA bills be available?
In the past, the MA legislature has typically created the permanent bill numbers around the end of January or beginning of February. So we expect this to occur soon! We will update this article as soon as we have any additional information.
What can I do so I don't miss important updates?
In the meantime, here are some suggestions to help you get the information you need:
You can search the MA legislature's website for bills from the current (194th) legislative session. If you have particular keywords that you're looking for, you can narrow the list by keyword. There are also several filters available. If the bill has an HD/SD number, that means it's still a docket and has not yet been given a bill number.
In Insight Engine, you can set up search alerts to help identify when bills are available. For example, say you are interested in HD.453 "An Act setting deadlines to electrify school buses and public fleets and establishing programs to encourage private fleet electrification," which is not yet available in Insight Engine. You can set up a search alert containing keywords or phrases from the title, like "deadlines to electrify school buses" and you'll get an alert when bill(s) matching those keywords appear in Insight Engine. To set a search alert, simply perform the desired search and then choose the frequency you'd like to get alerts from the dropdown menu below the search box. You may also search the exact title of the docket, but in the event the language for the bill doesn't exactly match what's in the docket, you would not get an alert.
If you have additional questions or need further assistance, please reach out to us at info@insightengine.org!