Testifying and Attending

The most open part of the process and the least known. Anyone may speak on any bill, and you do not need to be invited.

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This guide is written by Granite Record from the official pages it links to. Where a citation allows only one source, cite the official page for the part you rely on. The date below is the day the page was read.

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“Testifying and Attending.” Granite Record, https://graniterecord.org/guides/testifying. Accessed 19 Oct. 2026.
APA
Granite Record. (n.d.). Testifying and Attending. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2026, from https://graniterecord.org/guides/testifying
Chicago
Granite Record. “Testifying and Attending.” Accessed 19 Oct. 2026. https://graniterecord.org/guides/testifying.
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@misc{guides-testifying, title = {Testifying and Attending}, howpublished = {Granite Record}, url = {https://graniterecord.org/guides/testifying}, note = {Accessed 19 Oct. 2026} }

Open to the Public

Every legislative meeting and hearing is open to the public. You may attend in person, and most are live streamed and archived, so you can watch one later. Where you may speak is narrower: a public hearing is the meeting for that, and it is the only one at which members of the public are heard. You may attend any other meeting — an executive session, a subcommittee, a work session — but not speak at it.

Which meetings you may attend, and where you may speak
MeetingAttendSpeak
Public HearingYesYes: the only meeting at which the public is heard
Executive SessionYesNo
Subcommittee Work SessionYesNo
Work SessionYesNo

A public hearing is the meeting at which a committee hears a bill before it votes on what to recommend. Every bill introduced gets one, and anyone may speak at it.

You do not need to be invited, and you do not need to speak: signing in for or against is itself part of the record, and it is counted. Nor does a bill have to affect you. Committees hear bills for the whole state rather than for a district, so anyone may speak on any bill, whoever they are and wherever they live.

How Hearings Are Announced

A hearing is announced in the chamber's calendar, which is published weekly, and on the meeting schedule the General Court keeps online. The notice gives the committee, the bill, the day, the time and the room. Across the 3,143 hearings those calendars announced in the 2025–2026 term, the median notice is 5 days. That is the gap between the day the calendar is published and the day of the hearing.

Notices name the room by building:

The buildings a notice names
SHState House: 107 North Main Street, Concord.
LOBLegislative Office Building: 33 North State Street, Concord. Out of use for hearings while it is being worked on, and named in older notices.
GPGranite Place: 1 Granite Place, Concord, where House committee meetings are now held.

The Legislative Office Building is expected back in service around the start of the next term, and Granite Place to drop out of the rotation when it is. Go by the notice for the hearing you are attending — it names the building and the room, and it is right about the day it was published whatever this page says.

Both chambers live stream the hearings of their standing committees, the permanent committees bills are referred to, so a hearing can be watched as it happens.

Signing In

Both chambers take sign-ins online, each through its own form on the General Court's website, linked below. You choose the hearing's day, the committee and the bill, say whether you are a member of the public, an elected official, a lobbyist or agency staff, and whom you represent if anyone, and mark yourself supporting, opposing or neutral. On the House's form you may attach written testimony; the Senate's tells you on its confirmation page how to send yours. In the House the committee is given the counts, and the sign-ins are published after the hearing.

The window is not open indefinitely. It opens once the hearing is scheduled and published — the Senate's guidance says you can sign in on a bill as soon as its hearing is scheduled, and not before, and encourages signing in well ahead — and in practice it closes at midnight at the end of the day of the hearing, in both chambers. If the bill passes one chamber and gets a hearing in the other, there is a second window on the same terms.

The sign-ins are not part of the bill's docket, the General Court's list of every action on it, and no link on the docket leads to them. They are kept in the General Court's own sign-in records, which its website offers as a lookup of its own.

The Steps, in Order

  1. Find Out

    1. The calendarHearings are announced in the chamber's weekly calendar and on the General Court's meeting schedule. The median notice in the 2025–2026 term was 5 days; some give one.

  2. Sign In

    1. Online, for or againstIn either chamber, on its own form: your name and town, whether you are a member of the public or representing an organization, and which side. In the House you may attach written testimony.Counted, and part of the record
    2. Before the day endsThe window opens once the hearing is scheduled and, in practice, closes at midnight at the end of the day of the hearing.

  3. At the Hearing

    1. Speaking is separateA different act from signing in, and the chambers ask for it differently: a pink card in the House, the sign-up sheet in the Senate's committee room. The sponsor speaks first, and the chair decides whether to limit everyone after.You may speak here
    2. You need not speakA sign-in without a word said is in the record and is counted.

  4. Afterwards

    1. Executive sessionThe committee votes on its recommendation at a separate meeting, which may follow the hearing directly. Testimony is not taken at it.
    2. The other chamberIf the bill passes, it gets a hearing in the second chamber and a second sign-in window on the same terms.You may speak here

When a Hearing Starts

In practice a committee meeting never starts before the time its notice gives, and often starts later. An earlier hearing in the same room may have run long with more speakers than expected, or a lunch break or a caucus before the meeting may have run over. The time in the notice is the earliest it will begin, not a promise, so plan to wait.

Speaking at the Hearing

Speaking is a separate act from signing in, and spoken testimony is given in person. The two chambers ask for it differently:

  • In the House, in practice there is a stack of pink cards on a table and a registration sheet near the front of the room. Anyone may sign the sheet with their name and whether they support or oppose the bill. To speak, fill out a pink card and hand it to a staff member or a committee member, who passes it to the chair.
  • In the Senate, its guidance says to sign up on the sheets in the committee room on the day of the hearing, and its calendars tell those who wish to speak to sign up in person. In practice the sheet has a box to mark if you want to speak.

The sponsor speaks first, then the committee generally hears anyone who has asked to. No rule sets a time limit: whether to set one, and when a speaker's time is up, is the chair's call. With a few speakers there may be no limit at all. With many, more than about ten, chairs often give each person two or three minutes, the sponsor as long as they need, and ask speakers not to repeat points already made several times, so that each brings their own view.

You may read from prepared notes or from your phone. Props are not allowed while you testify, and signs are allowed in the hallways but not in the committee room. Before closing the hearing the chair usually asks whether anyone who has not yet spoken would like to speak on the bill — a last chance for anyone who did not sign up — and if no one does, the hearing is closed.

You do not have to be an expert. The most useful testimony is the most concrete: what this bill would do to you, in your town, said in particulars rather than in general — the cost, the date it would take effect, the number of people it would reach, whatever the specific is in your case.

Written Testimony

You can give a committee your testimony in writing, as well as or instead of speaking. The Senate's guidance says to send it by email through the “Email All Committee Members” link on the committee's page on the General Court's website, and every committee's page here has a button that does the same. On the House's online form you can also attach it to your sign-in. In practice you may bring it on paper too: one printed copy for each member of the committee, which they will take and pass around. Paper copies are optional.

What Happens After the Hearing

The committee votes on what to recommend at a separate meeting called an executive session. It may be days later, or straight after the hearing: Senate hearing notices often say an executive session may follow, and the House's rules let a committee hold one right after a noticed hearing without further notice. It is public and you may attend it, but no testimony is taken at it.

An executive session can be hard to catch. Some notices set aside one block of time for it, and the chair then takes up the bills in it in any order. And many House committee notices carry this line: “Executive session on pending legislation may be held throughout the day, time permitting, from the time the committee is initially convened.” It means that once the committee has met that day, it may vote on any bill it has pending at any point before it adjourns, and the notice gives no time for any one vote. To see a particular vote you may have to watch the whole day, and you may learn when it happened only afterward. House calendars have printed the line since at least February 1997, and still do.

The committee then reports its recommendation to the chamber, and where it was split the majority and the minority each write a report. Whether you spoke or only signed in, the counts and any written testimony stay in the record.

In the Record

This site holds 52,875 public hearings, each with the committee and the day. Every bill's page shows its own hearings. Where a hearing was recorded — 5,904 bills, nearly every one since 2021 — the bill's Hearings tab links it, opened where the bill was taken up when that moment has been found. A committee's page lists every day it met and what it heard.

Bills also carry the House's online sign-in counts: how many people registered supporting, opposing and neutral. The Senate's online sign-ins are not among the General Court's tables this site reads. Names and written testimony are not published here.

Where This Comes From