Division of Archives and Records Service Legislative bills copies, i 1963-1986.

This series contains unofficial copies of the text of legislative bills the Archives has collected over the years. Generally these are copies produced and distributed to the public by the legislature so individuals can monitor the introduction or see the final version of a given bill. They were gathered by the reference section of the Archives and maintained for research convenience until the transfer of the record copies of the bills.

The term "bills," in the broad sense, refers to bills, resolutions, memorials, etc. In the specific sense, a bill is material a legislator wishes to have made into a law. Memorials and resolutions are position statements which do not have the weight of law, but are acted on in the same manner. A bill may be renumbered and/or undergo a number of rewrites during its course in the legislature; with the exception of an occasional substitute bill, those changes are not recorded here. Neither does this series include the signature sheets nor the criticalbacking sheets which log the bill's progress through committees, amendments, and votes.

Bills are abbreviated in the container list, with the first letter indicating chamber of origin: House and Senate bills (HB and SB); concurrent memorials (HCM or SCM); joint memorials (HJM or SJM); concurrent resolutions (HCR or SCR); enabling resolutions, which permit the introduction of non-budget matters during a budget session (HER or SER); and joint resolutions (HJR or SJR). Sometimes final status sheets from the session have been filmed along with the bills. This provides a list of bill numbers, titles, sponsors, and status which may be of use. This series contains all the bills collected by the Archives through 1986. By the mid-1980s, the BILL DRAFTING AND RESEARCH RECORDS, Series 7073, created by Legislative Research and General Counsel are relatively complete and contain bill drafts as well as additional background material.