I’ve been given the green light to announce that Wisconsin Legislative Drafting Records are now available online at the Wisconsin State Legislature Web site. Records from the 1999 through 2005 sessions are available.
At this time, it seems that only the browsing function is working. My test keyword searches have produced no results. I’m told that they are looking into it.
As you may know, the UW Law Library also maintains a database of Wisconsin Legislative Drafting Records. Our site, however, only contain records from the 1999 through 2003 sessions. Our database is comprised of scans made available by the Legislative Reference Bureau, as is the new database from the Wisconsin Legislature.
Now that the Legislature is making this information available directly, it is likely that we at the UW Law Library will discontinue our database. However, we will leave it up for the time being, so that our search engine can still be used to search the 1999-2003 records.
What are drafting records? [from the WI Legislature Drafting Records page]
Drafting records are the official, administrative records of the bill drafting process, and are maintained by the Legislative Reference Bureau. Drafting records may or may not be useful in determining the intent of a legislator in introducing a bill.