Author: Chris Davis
Date: 2/6/17
How to Contact Your State Legislator or Committee People
Contacting Your State Legislator
Step 1) Find out who your legislators are
-Use this link by typing your address into the search,
Step 2) Click the name of your legislator
-All this website will give you is the name of your legislator, their phone number, and their email
Step 3) Learn more about your state legislator
-Go to this website,
- Once there, click the “LEGISLATORS” tab
- This will take you to a list of all state legislators that is alphabetically ordered by last name
- Find your legislator and click on their name, the legislator’s profile will include
- Their mailing address
- Their room number
- Their phone number
- Their email
- Their party affiliation
- Their committee assignments
- Their district
- Their county (or counties)
- Their sponsored bills and resolutions
Contacting Important Committee People
What is a committee?
A committee is a group of legislators who work on a specific type of legislation. Bills are sent to the various committees where the legislators can 1) pass the bill onto another committee or onto the floor for a vote, 2) amend the bill, and 3) kill the bill (end it).
Knowing what committee your bill is going to and when your bill is being heard is important for two reasons. 1) Knowing where your bill is going allows you to know who you need to target, i.e. it tells you who you must persuade to get your bill through committee. 2) Knowing when your bill will be heard by a committee tells you when to show up and testify on the bill.
Why bother with them?
-Citizens are encouraged to attend committee hearings so they can speak directly to the elected officials (that will decide the fate of the bill) as to why they support or oppose a bill. This is called testifying.
Who works on committees?
-Elected officials
-Head staffer (for each committee)
How to contact committee people:
Step 1) Find out where the bill you support is going (option b is generally the best)
There are a few ways to do this:
- Ask your legislator
- This is best done if you are wanting to advocate for or against a bill your legislator is running
- Search for the bill through the state legislature’s website,
- This is best done if you know the bill number, title, or sponsor. However, you can search by keywords as well
- Once you find the bill, click on it, and scroll down to the bottom of the page to see where the bill is headed
- Call the head staffer of the committee you suspect the bill will be in
- Follow this link to a list of committees,
- Click on the committee you suspect your bill will be at
- The link will take you to a page that will have the following information on it
- Who is on the committee
- Who the chair and vice chair of the committee are
- Who the staff contact is (including their phone number and email, in the top right box)
- The upcoming schedule for the committee
- Contact the staffer to ask them if the bill you support will be heard in their committee
Step 2) Using the link from option c in step 1, find the committee that you now know your bill is going to
a.click on the committee that you know your bill is going to
b. use the information on the committee page to determine who you should be calling, emailing, and ect. to get them to support your bill
c. lastly, use the information to show up and testify on the bill