I’ve finally had a chance to total up all the bill requests received by North Carolina legislative staff for 2007-2008 and compare the totals to those for 2005-2006, 2003-2004, and 2001-2002. I’ve tracked the number of blank bill requests and excluded them from the totals. Staff workload is up 6% from 2005, up 61% from 2003, and up 67% from 2001.
Blank bills dropped dramatically after a six year rise, House rules in 2007 banned them and Senate rules limited them to two per member:
2001 491
2003 559
2005 563
2007 86
Total drafting requests for each biennial session:
| 2007 | 2005 | 2003 | 2001 | ||
| Bill Drafting Div. | 4986 | 4687 | 2920 | 3103 | |
| Research Division | 707 | 680 | 613 | 298 | |
| Total Draft Requests | 5693 | 5367 | 3533 | 3401 |
Increase/Decrease
| % Change | ||||
| 2005 to 2007 | 2003 to 2007 | 2001 to 2007 | ||
| Bill Drafting Div. | +6.4% | +70.8% | +60.7% | |
| Research Division | +4.0% | +15.3% | +137.2% | |
| Total | +6.1% | +61.1% | +67.4% |
archive of workload posts is here.
Drafting Musings 
What percentage of bills drafted have any action taken on them?
CD: on your question about action on bills that are drafted, we think about 90-95% of bills that are drafted are filed.
As to those that are filed, the document linked below shows how many bills were filed and how many were enaxted for each session back to 1965
Click to access LegStats1965-2008.pdf
Is there a limit to the number of bills a legislator can introduce?