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.

Anyone may testify on any bill. You do not need to be invited, you do not need to live in the district, and you do not need to speak — signing in for or against is itself part of the record, and it is counted.

How to find out a hearing is happening

Hearings are announced in the chamber's calendar, which is published weekly, and on the meeting schedule the General Court keeps online. Across the hearings this site has parsed out of those calendars, the median notice is five days — the calendar carrying the announcement is published, on the middle case, five days before the hearing itself. Some give as little as one day.

Signing in

The House takes sign-ins online, before and during the hearing. You give your name and town, say whether you are a member of the public or representing an organisation, and mark yourself supporting, opposing or neutral. You may attach written testimony. The counts are read by the committee and they are published afterwards.

The window is not open indefinitely. Sign-in opens once the hearing is scheduled and published, and closes at the end of the day of the hearing. If the bill passes one chamber and gets a hearing in the other, there is a second window on the same terms.

Speaking

Speaking is a separate thing from signing in, and you fill in a card to do it. The sponsor speaks first, then the committee generally hears anyone who has asked to. There is no fixed time limit but a chair will ask you to be brief if many people are waiting, and repeating what the last speaker said is the thing most likely to get you moved along.

You do not have to be an expert. The most useful testimony is usually the most specific: what this bill would do to you, in your town, with a number or a date in it.

What happens to it

The committee votes on a recommendation in a later meeting called an executive session, which is public and which you may also attend. Sign-in counts and written testimony go into the record either way.

In the record

This site has parsed 7,250 public hearings out of the House and Senate calendars, each with the committee, the day, the time and the room. Every bill's page shows its own hearings, and the Videos tab links the recording at the moment the bill was taken up.