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Bill Enrollment and Agency Request System (BEARS)

BEARS replaced the Bill Analysis and Tracking System (BATS) in July 2022.

The Bill Enrollment and Agency Request System (BEARS) is utilized by agencies, the Office of Financial Management (OFM), and the Governor’s Office to create and analyze agency request legislation. BEARS is also used by Agencies, OFM, and the Governor’s Office to make recommendations and decisions on enrolled bills.

Agency Bill Analyses

Agencies can utilize the Agency Bill Analyses section within BEARS to analyze bills working their way through the legislature, with the ability for users to create their own custom lists of bills with filters, sorting and specified columns for each custom view.

The agency administrator and/or coordinator can: 

  • Create and assign an analysis or multiple analyses of any given prefiled bill to be prepared by another user within their agency
  • Manage (create, edit, delete and review) agency bill analyses for their agency

The agency analyst can:

  • Review and edit agency bill analyses once they are created by their agency administrator/coordinator

The agency user can:

  • Review agency bill analyses for their agency

Agency Request Legislation

The owner of Agency Request Legislation can:

  • Create and assign a request to an Agency Analyst, as well as withdraw a request from the system.
  • Manage and control access to information for the purposes of managing, viewing, or updating agency requests.
  • Submit agency requests to OFM for recommendations and decisions.

The Office of Financial Management can:

  • Review and ask for an agency to revise or withdraw a request.
  • Provide information on policy and budget impacts.
  • Submit the completed Agency Request to the Governor’s office for review and approval.

Enrolled Bills

Through BEARS, OFM and the Governor’s Office can analyze bills enrolled by the Legislature:

  • OFM analyzes the enrolled bills and makes recommendations to the Governor’s Office.
  • The Governor’s Office can check-in bills, view OFM recommendations, manage bill actions, vetoes, talking points, and decisions made by the Governor.

Frequently Asked Questions

The BEARS application will guide the user through the information necessary to submit an agency request. It is important to complete the fields as requested in the application rather than referencing an attachment.

Bills can be tracked through the Search and Tracking Tools located on the Washington State Legislature Bill Information Page.  Bill-related information in the current Legislative Session is loaded hourly into BEARS from the Legislative Service Center database for agencies to create analyses.
Equity questions are now part of BEARS required elements questions so uploading a separate attachment is no longer required.

BEARS does not have an auto save feature at this time, and in the case your browser is refreshed or closed unexpectedly you may lose any unsaved changes on the page you were working in, so it is recommended that you save your work periodically.

  1. If the status of the Agency Request is "OFM Review" and not "Decision Made", "Revision Requested”, or Withdrawn
  2. Create a document with a file name indicating a new Z-Draft Number
  3. Navigate to the Attachments Screen
  4. Select the Upload button
  5. Wait for the file to be successfully uploaded
  6. Navigate to the Review Screen
  7. Select the Resubmit button - This will inform OFM that you have made an update
  8. If the status is “Revision Requested”, then delete and updated the Z-Draft Number on the Required Elements page before Resubmitting
  9. If the status is “Decision Made”, you will need to coordinate with OFM Budget Operations Analyst to provide them with the updated Z-Draft information
  10. If the status is “Withdrawn” the analysis is read only and cannot be edited

Note: Attachments can be added, deleted, or replaced for any reason after an analysis is submitted, but the analysis will need to be resubmitted to notify OFM of the update.

Reference materials
Training

If your agency uses the Washington State Learning Center:

If you are a Higher Education employee or if your agency does not use the Washington State Learning Center, use the link below. Note that this version will not be recorded in your LMS learner transcript.

If you process analyses on behalf of OFM for submitted Agency Request Legislation then use the link below to review a presentation of the new BEARS system performing this process.

Help Desk

Contact information

OFM Help Desk
360.407.9100
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