DC Legislative History tips

FYI. If you need to find a legislative history of a DC law, please see the following suggestions from the above group:


If you can find the DC Bill Number, or DC Act number (which is in the DC Register) you can request a copy of the bill file from the DC Council Legislative Services Division (located in the Council building). To call them for more info: 202-724-8050. The cool thing is the DC file is free. It usually takes about 2-3 days though. They don't let you copy it yourself at the building.

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Call Legislative Services at 202-727-5090. If the law isn't too old, they will make a photocopy of the legislative file. It might take a week or so.

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You might try calling DC Legislative Office at 202-724-8050. They will provide assistance to those who call and make an advance appt. This is the archivist of DC legislative histories. The Washingtonia Dept. of the MLK DC Library has DC Codes and DCMR (the regs) going back for decades but not actual compilations of legislative histories.

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While this is not a comprehensive answer, its the one I defaulted to last week when I was in your situation.

The DC Code from West is actually very good at listing out Legislative history action at the end of each section. Great place to start if you can. There are several numbers involved: the bill number, the Act number (when council passes it), and the Law number (when US Congress approves of it). You can also get to this from the DC Government Website.

If it is recent, you can search the DC Register which publishes bills and passed law text, from the DC Council website.

Call the DC Council Office of the Secretary - they have full legislative history files on everything - all the way back. They will copy out bill/law text, but if you want the entire file you have to make an appointment and go to them. The person I was talking to was very personable.

D.C. School of Law, it seems, has a collection of this stuff. The library catalog is online.

As I said, not very comprehensive, but it worked.

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I haven't time to reply fully just now but this topic has been covered a couple of times in the newsletter of the Law Librarians' Society of Washington DC. You could try searching the website at www.llsdc.org. It is possible someone in the organization has compiled a history of what you want. Look for the sales publication, Union List of Legislative Histories, and then call the contact person and ask them to look up what you want. However, I am not certain that DC laws are included.The bottom-line is that compiling a DC legislative history is a tedious process and all the work has to be done at the DC City Building and appointments and multiple visits are required. Older histories are actually easier to do than newer ones because more was transcribed.

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Try these DC gov't offices (and website), probably start with legislative services. Maybe the big databases of lexis-nexis and westlaw have this but I wouldnt be surprised if not.

http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/
District Gov. Operator 202-727-1000
DC City Council 202-724-8080
Legis. Services 202-724-8050
DC Register 202-727-5090
DC Court Lib. 202-879-1435

Don't forget to emphasize you are a lay person to legal stuff.

Your requestors probaby want a) committee reports and b) earlier drafts of a bill plus amendments, the latter which (I don't know DC) probably appear in whatever is the official record of DC legislative sessions.

Although not official, public statements in the public press on the legislation by councilpersons probably are sought, and a public press search can narrow down in lay language the legislative process and its timing.
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D.C. legislative history generally is not published the way federal legislative history is. To conduct research on a particular statute that was enacted by the D.C. Council, you need to contact the Office of Legislative Services in the office of the Secretary to the Council. It looks like that number is 202-724-8080 (from the not-very-helpful web site of the D.C. Council). The Office of Legislative Services has files on legislation that was passed by the Council, which you can go down and make photocopies of. Of course, if the legislation you are researching is from the pre-Home Rule era, i.e., pre-1974 or so, the legislative history research process is different, because it would be a matter of federal legislative history research.

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