A bill file includes every official legislative document directly related to the bill. The physical bill files are located at either the Texas Legislative Reference Library (files from 1973-present) or the Texas State Archives (all files prior to 1973). The Legislative Reference Library is engaged in a massive ongoing effort to scan all existing bill files and make them available online via its Legislative Archive System (LAS). For the current coverage, see the status page. Note that due to the limitations of OCR technology, the scanned files are not full-text searchable.
There are two ways to locate a bill file. One is to use the LAS Direct Search to find a bill by its bill number or session law chapter number. The second search option is to use the LAS Advanced Search to look for bills based on a variety of criteria, including subject, author, session, bill type, caption keyword, and many others. To see which sessions have this information available for searching, check the status page.
The House and Senate journals are the official record of the Legislature's actions during a session. Each chamber has its own journal, and new ones are produced each session. E=The journals for the most recent several sessions are available at the House and Senate websites. Many of the older journals have been scanned and are available in the Legislative Reference Library's journals collection.
Committee Hearings
Since 1974, most of the Texas Legislature's committee hearings have been recorded and preserved on audiotapes, which are stored at the Texas State Archives and the House Media Office. A guide to locating the various video and audio recordings is available from the Legislative Reference Library.
Prior to 1974, recordings are not available and the only record of a committee's work is in its report in the bill file or, if they exist, the committee's minutes. Some committee minutes may be found via the Legislative Reference Library's committee minutes database, and others are available at the Texas State Archives.
Floor Proceedings
The House and Senate discussions on a bill can also be a rich source of legislative history and intent information. To find out whether audiotapes are available for a particular floor debate, see the Legislative Reference Library guide.
Code Revisor's Reports
Texas is engaged in a long-term project to transfer its civil statutes from a single set to subject-specific codes. All available Code Revisor's Reports have been scanned and made available by the Legislative Reference Library on their statutory revision page.
Interim Committee Reports
Near the end of each legislative session, the presiding officers of the House and Senate release a list of topics that their chamber's standing committees must study during the interim period before the next legislative session. These topics are called "interim charges." All interim charges and interim reports are available online through the Legislative Reference Library's Legislative Reports database.
Session Summaries
After a session adjourns, several legislative offices publish overviews of its accomplishments and guides to passed legislation. While these summaries don't provide any original information, they are a good way to get an idea of how a particular session treated various topics. These guides are available online here. A similar publication covering joint resolutions, the Analysis of Proposed Constitutional Amendments, is available through the Legislative Reference Library's Constitutional Amendments database.