How to Read an LRB Number
Just about every legislative document that gets filed in the Illinois legislature contains a funny little number starting with "LRB." This number's official title is the draft name, but we colloquially refer to it as the "LRB number." You'll find it below the synopsis on the cover page of a bill or constitutional amendment resolution and in the upper right corner on all other pages.
Senate Bill 1046's LRB number is
LRB098 05333 HEP 35367 b
and it packs a lot of useful information:
The "LRB" tells us that the legislation was drafted by the Legislative Reference Bureau. LRB drafts the vast majority of bills and amendments, but there are some exceptions, such as Senate Bill 2424, which was drafted by the Office of Management & Budget. So I suppose the LRB number for that bill is actually an OMB number.
The "098" means that the bill was drafted during the 98th General Assembly. Illinois' legislative session runs in 2-year periods; we're in the 2nd year of our current (98th) General Assembly.
"05333" refers to the file number that is assigned to the draft. What this means is that in the file cabinets in our office, there is a file with that number, and that file contains the instructions provided for the bill draft and any other correspondence or information the drafter saw fit to include with the file. Also, any amendments, conference committee reports, or amendatory veto motions concerning a particular bill share the same file number as the bill (and those drafts end up in the same file as the bill).
"HEP" are the initials of the attorney who drafted the document; in this case, yours truly.
"35367" is the log identification number which is unique to the document.
"b" tells us that the document is a bill. Other letters indicate other types of legislative documents; for example:
"a" means the document is an amendment.
"c" means the document is a conference committee report.
"e" means the document is a Constitutional amendment.
"r" means the document is a resolution.
"s" means the document is a revisory bill.
"v" means the document is an amendatory veto motion.
So, looking at LRB098 05333 HEP 35367 b, we are able to tell that it: 1) is a bill; 2) was prepared sometime in 2013 or 2014; 3) was drafted by HEP; and 4) came out of LRB.
If you do a legislation search for the file number on the ilga.gov website (for example, if you clicked here and entered "05333"), it will pull up the bill and any amendments that have been filed. Handy, eh?
I remember when I first started working here, I was impressed that a number that seemed like just a bunch of gibberish could hold so much meaning. Not only that, but the LRB number is the foundation of the information system that keeps track of legislative documents as they shuffle through the legislative process, a process which is, for the most part, depicted in real time on General Assembly website.
This post was supplemented with information from Section 40-30 of the Illinois Bill Drafting Manual.