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Module 2 · The weekly workflow · Lesson 4 of 13 · 15 minutes weekly

Review and triage new bills

You can turn a week of introductions into a tagged, owned, decided list in one 30-minute pass.

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The BMS scenario

It's the weekly review and dozens of bills have been introduced across your states. You need decisions — track, tag, assign, or drop — not a reading list.

When to use it

Weekly during session, and daily in the first weeks of a fast-moving state.

Why it matters

Untriaged bills are the single biggest source of surprise for a state affairs team — a bill that sat unread for three weeks and then moved out of committee is a much harder conversation than one flagged in week one. The 30-minute weekly pass is what prevents that.

Before you start

  • Your issue tag list agreed (Module 2, next lesson) — untagged triage creates rework.
  • The bill sheet you triage into, with columns for issue, owner and stance.
  • 30 uninterrupted minutes at the same time each week.

Field guide

Introduced-date filter on the sheet
Reset to 'last 7 days' every week — a stale filter is how last month's bills quietly reappear in this week's pass.
Issue tag field
Never leave blank; if genuinely unsure, tag Monitor rather than skip tagging — a blank tag is invisible to every downstream filter and dashboard.
Owner field
Assign at the moment of triage, not later — an untagged owner is the most common reason a bill goes stale.
Stance field
Set an initial value even if it's provisional; 'no stance yet' should be an explicit Monitor, not a blank.

If your situation is different

  • If you cover a short-session state where hundreds of bills drop in one week, raise your keeper bar for that pass and lean harder on Quincy's plain-language summary to keep the 30-second budget realistic.
  • If you're triaging a multi-state omnibus or budget bill, give it more than 30 seconds deliberately — these carry the most amendment risk and deserve a fuller read even in triage.
  • If you're covering for a colleague's states this week, use their existing tag and owner conventions rather than your own, and flag anything you tagged as Monitor for their review.

Step by step

Steps describe the general Quorum workflow. What your seat shows depends on the BMS subscription — check with your Quorum admin if a control isn't there.

  1. 1

    Open your bill sheet filtered to new introductions

    Work from the sheet, not from alert emails. The sheet is where the decision gets recorded, so triaging anywhere else creates a second pass.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 1.1Open your state bill sheet — not your alert inbox.
    2. 1.2Filter to bills introduced in the last seven days.
    3. 1.3Sort by state so you work one legislature at a time and keep context.

    You know it worked when: The sheet shows only this week's introductions.

  2. 2

    Read the profile summary before the bill text

    Open the bill profile and read the summary, sponsor and status. Ask Quincy to summarize anything long. Most triage decisions need 30 seconds, not the full text.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 2.1Open the first bill profile in a second tab.
    2. 2.2Read the summary, sponsor, committee and last action — in that order.
    3. 2.3If the text is long, ask Quincy for a plain summary rather than reading it.
    4. 2.4Give yourself 30 seconds per bill; a bill that needs longer is a keeper by definition.

    You know it worked when: You made a keep/drop call without opening the full bill text more than twice.

  3. 3

    Decide in one pass: tag, assign, stance or drop

    For a keeper, apply the issue tag, set the internal owner and record an initial stance. For a non-keeper, remove it from the sheet so the list stays trustworthy.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 3.1Keeper: apply the issue tag, set the internal owner, set an initial stance (Support / Oppose / Monitor).
    2. 3.2Not a keeper: remove it from the sheet so the list stays trustworthy.
    3. 3.3Unsure: tag as Monitor with an owner and move on — do not leave it blank.

    You know it worked when: No row in the filtered view has an empty issue tag or owner.

  4. 4

    Flag the two or three that need a human conversation

    Leave a short internal note on the bills you want to raise with the wider team, so the note carries the context into the next stand-up.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 4.1Add a one-line internal note on the two or three bills that need a human conversation.
    2. 4.2Write the note as a question for the team, not a summary of the bill.
    3. 4.3Bring that short list to the stand-up rather than the whole sheet.

    You know it worked when: You have a list of three or fewer bills to raise, each with a question attached.

Common mistakes

  • Triaging from the alert inbox instead of the sheet.

    Fix: Work from the sheet filtered to the last 7 days so nothing gets triaged twice or missed between emails.

  • Leaving a bill's issue tag or owner blank when unsure.

    Fix: Tag it Monitor with an owner — blank fields are invisible to filters and dashboards downstream.

  • Reading full bill text on every bill instead of the summary/sponsor/committee/action sequence.

    Fix: Reserve full-text reads for the two or three bills that genuinely need them; ask Quincy for a plain summary otherwise.

  • Bringing the whole triaged sheet to stand-up instead of the short flagged list.

    Fix: Keep the flagged list to three bills or fewer, each with a specific question.

Prompts to run in Quincy, inside Quorum

Quincy is the agentic layer in Quorum — it works on your live data. Copy a prompt into Quincy after you log in. If you want the steps explained first, ask the site guide.

  • "Summarize this bill in plain language and tell me what changed from the last version."
  • "Of these ten newly introduced bills, which look most likely to move quickly based on sponsor and committee?"
Open Quincy in Quorum

Practice it now

  1. 1) Run one timed triage pass this week and record how many of the week's bills you kept.
  2. 2) If you kept more than a quarter, the search feeding the sheet is too broad — go back to the search lesson.
Open Quorum and try it

Done looks like this

  • Every tracked bill has an issue tag, an owner and a stance.
  • Triage takes the same slot each week and finishes inside it.

When to stop and ask

If the issue taxonomy itself is unclear or contested for a given bill, don't invent a new tag on the spot — raise it at stand-up or with the tag owner; check permissions or missing fields with a Quorum admin or the BMS account team (Michael Fuentes, michael.fuentes@quorum.us).