Legislative Service Commission - Navigating a Bill in Ten Easy Steps

Navigating a Bill in Ten Easy Steps

Check the top of the bill to be sure you have the correct version (e.g., As Introduced, As Passed by the House, etc.).
The Clerk's office assigns a bill its official number, and the bill retains that number throughout a two-year General Assembly.
Am. (for "amended") or Sub. (for "substitute") (and sometimes both) appearing before a bill number means that the bill has been changed (e.g., Am. Sub. S.B. 13).
The legislator whose name is listed first is the primary sponsor of the bill.
The title includes a brief description of the bill's contents.
A bill contains the entire text of amended and enacted sections of the Revised Code (a constitutional requirement); the sections are in numerical order, not in order by topic.
Within amended or enacted sections:
- existing language that is being retained is in lower case,
- existing language that is ~~being removed~~ from an amended section ~~is stricken~~,
- through 2000, NEW LANGUAGE that was being proposed was IN UPPER CASE,
- beginning in 2001, new language that is being proposed is underlined.
The text of a Revised Code section that is being repealed outright is not included in the bill; look for the Revised Code section number in the title and then locate the text of the section in the Revised Code.
Each bill has line numbers, and amendments are keyed to those numbers (e.g., in line 271, delete "two" and insert "three").
Uncodified sections (such as emergency clauses, appropriations, and provisions establishing temporary committees or task forces) usually are at the end of a bill and are numbered as parts of the bill (e.g., Section 3, Section 4, etc.).

To learn more about how to read a bill, see Chapter 6: Tools for Understanding a Bill from "A Guidebook for Ohio Legislators"; to learn how a bill becomes law in Ohio, see Chapter 5: Enacting Legislation.


*Ohio Legislative Service Commission*