2026 Legislative Session
The 2026 Legislative Session is underway and ends on May 6, 2026.CAAO Bill Tracker is up and running, and Jennifer Lineaweaver is already identifying bills for CAAO to monitor. When you sign into the software you will notice that there are several folders with "New this week", "Monitoring", and "Related" being the most important.
We try to break this up for with "Related" being something that might tax collector, or town matter, that you may want to be aware of but is not crucial to us. Monitoring is what directly affects us, and we are watching carefully and many times sending in testimony on if the legislation as presented has issues. New this week is exactly what it sounds like. Should you get in the habit of checking bill tracker every week, you can hit that folder for what is the newest.
CAAO Bill tracker can be found here: https://igs.ctadvokit.com:8443/
It is important to remember that there is a huge difference between a "raised bill" and a "proposed bill". A "raised" bill is a bill that was raised by a committee and has a much greater chance of going somewhere as it has support from multiple individuals. 99% of the "proposed" bills die off and never even get a public hearing. Many proposed bills are proposed merely to satisfy a complaint from one constituent and could never garner committee support. If we put every proposed bill into the folder, it would be inundated so we stick to those that we are being told have some backing behind them.
It is for this reason that most of the proposed bills will never be placed in the "monitoring" folder unless we want to make sure you are aware of them or the issue.
I also want to mention that in a short session, like we have this year, typically you do not see very many "proposed" bills. That is because in a short session, the rules require:
By individual members: Proposed bills must relate to budgetary, revenue, or financial matters
By Committee: Bills on any subject
By Legislative Leaders: Bills certified as emergencies by the speaker of the house (Matt Ritter) and president Pro Tempore (president of the senate, or Martin Looney)
Because proposed bills may only be budget related, in most short sessions, we do not see a single proposed bill being raised. Whereas, in a long session, you will notice that we get flooded with hundreds of them.
Any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly.
John Chaponis, Legislative Chair