By Billie Fidlin, Director of Justice & Outreach
There is a way to register your position on specific bill legislation before the bill appears on an agenda. If you sign in to RTS – Request to Speak – and go to “My Bill Positions” you will see a screen that shows what positions you have taken in the past and will allow you to select new bills by number even if they don’t appear on a committee agenda. While I’m not aware of any way to add comments, you can register your position and even go in later to update it.
Check out the link: https://apps.azleg.gov/. You will need to have an active Request to Speak account. This requires you to go to the Capitol and use a kiosk to sign up (easy!). But from then on you can participate from home. The link above will show you need to register and give brief instructions. More detailed instruction is noted below.
From the azleg manual:
WHAT IS THE REQUEST TO SPEAK PROGRAM? The Request To Speak program (RTS) is designed to allow the public to register an opinion on bills listed on agendas and to request to speak on a bill in a committee. It replaces the old slips of paper previously used to sign in and let the committee chairperson know you want to speak to the committee. Under the old paper system, you could only sign in to speak or register an opinion if you were physically at the capital. After the initial setup, at a kiosk, the RTS program allows you to participate from your home or office. When the committee is in session, the committee members, and the public, will see a list of names of people who have registered an opinion, if you wish to speak or not, who you are representing, and comments you may leave in the comment box. This information is also available if a person searches past committee agendas. Legislators will see your bill position throughout the process.
HOW TO CREATE AN RTS ACCOUNT Constituents are required to come to the capital the first time you use the RTS system. When you come to the Capitol, you can create an account and sign in on one of the Kiosks in either the House or Senate (there is also a Kiosk available in the Tucson office). If you create an account at home, you will only be able to use the Bill Status Inquiry application to track activity on a bill, not register an opinion or create a request to speak until you come to the capital and sign in on one of the Kiosks here. You only need to physically come to the capital once. After that, everything can be done at home.
