California Legislative History

Bill analyses are written by staff working for the legislature. Analyses explain how the bill changes existing law, identify who supports and opposes the bill, and summarize arguments for and against the bill. Although the analyses are written by legislative staff, not the legislators themselves, they provide insight into the issues legislators considered when voting for a bill. They also often provide extended quotes from the bill's author, explaining the author's purpose for the bill.

The now closed Assembly Office of Research formerly prepared analyses, available at the library in microfiche:

Currently, staff working for legislative committees write analyses of the bill that are distributed to the legislative committees (committee analyses) and to the Senate or Assembly as a whole (floor analyses) to prepare them for each vote on a bill. 

For committee and floor analyses from 1991 forwards, check:

For older bills, generally, the only way to obtain the committee and floor analyses is to contact the California state archives to purchase:

For an overview of the process for creating committe and floor analyses, see: