Sacramento, CA California Legislature / 2025–26 Session Built by Capitol insiders

Why RTG

What RTG ships that other tools don't.

California advocacy work is team-based, real-time, and coalition-driven. Your platform should be too. Here's the deep look at what makes RTG different — and why it matters to the work you do every day.

01 · Real-time, literally

From the floor TV feed. To your phone in minutes.

Daily-update tools were fine in 2014. Useless now, during the busy weeks of session that actually matter. By the time the morning email lands, the vote was called, the on-call window came and went, and your chance to move a member went with it.

Walk the Capitol during session and you'll find lobbyists in the back of the chamber, phones raised, snapping the vote board the moment a roll call closes. That's the game — knowing who voted how before anyone has to ask.

What you get

Live floor TV feed — Assembly and Senate
Vote board + results captured the moment announced
SMS, push, and email alerts
Per-user, per-bill priority routing
Live Activity feed + shareable report

In practice

RTG is the chamber view, for everyone who isn't in the chamber. Vote called at 11:14am on a bill your team has been whipping for six weeks. RTG captures the vote board image, every legislator's Aye / No / NV, the motion, the outcome — and the alert hits your phone at 11:17am, with the breakdown in a Live Activity feed and a shareable report. Your 1pm board call starts already knowing the outcome and the breakdown.

When legislators add or change their vote later that afternoon (it happens), the record updates — so what you see is the current record, not a stale gavel-time snapshot.

Preview Live Activity →

“Wow — you put the real in real-time.”

First reaction from a California advocacy customer · RTG live floor-vote alerts

02 · Coalition whip counts

Whip counts that span organizations. Across separate accounts.

Coalitions don't run on one account. Your trade association, the union partners, the nonprofits — separate organizations, separate logins, separate whip data. Three orgs, three workspaces, three silos.

So teams cobble. Shared spreadsheets that drift out of sync. Group texts. Screenshots of screenshots. By the time someone updates the master tally at 4pm, half the count is stale and nobody's sure who set what.

What you get

Three modes: Personal, Workspace team, cross-customer coalition
Per-position attribution — "by Fred, Healthcare CA"
Anticipated-vs-actual scoring at vote time
CSV / PDF export for board reports
Shared notes per legislator, attributed and timestamped

In practice

One whip count. Three modes. Attribution end-to-end. Your trade association is whipping AB 1534 with three union partners and two nonprofits — not in a shared spreadsheet, but in a single RTG votecard. By 4pm the day before the vote, the shared count shows 42 Y / 15 N / 23 Unknown — each entry timestamped with who set it.

The next morning the Assembly passes the bill 41 Y / 16 N / 23 NV — by a single vote. Anticipated-vs-actual reveals which legislator surprised you: one you had as Y voted N. The attribution layer shows who on the coalition flagged her as Unknown the whole time.

Preview Coalition whip counts →

03 · Position intelligence

See the whole position landscape. Bill-side and org-side.

Every committee analysis is a public snapshot of who's registered Support, Oppose, Neutral, Support-if-amended, or Oppose-unless-amended. The position changes between hearings are the signal most teams miss — because they're working from one snapshot at a time.

The data is public — published with each committee analysis — but it's buried in PDFs, scattered across hearing dates, and never indexed across the session. Skim the latest analysis and you assume the lineup hasn't changed. It usually has.

What you get

Bill-side matrix — every snapshot, side-by-side
Org-side directory — full footprint per organization
5 position types: Support, Oppose, Neutral, SIA, OUA
Switched filter — who flipped between hearings
4 tabs per org: Moving, History, Committee, Aligned

In practice

Every snapshot, side-by-side. RTG captures each committee analysis, indexes positions across hearings, and flags any organization that switched sides. Filter to “Switched” and you see exactly who flipped between hearings — the data you'd otherwise dig out of PDF stacks, surfaced in one view.

Your association is sponsoring AB 1534. A trade group that registered Support in Labor and Employment has flipped to Oppose by Higher Education. RTG flags the change the moment the analysis publishes. The next call you make is to that org's director — while the shift is still fresh, with lead time to understand it and address it before the bill moves forward.

Preview Position Intelligence →

The math

What hours back actually buys you.

Every advocacy team we've talked to has the same problem: too much information, not enough hours. Here's what changes when the tool actually works.

10–15

hrs/week saved

for heavy users during session

10 min

board report

not Sunday night, not three tabs deep

Every

change in the public record

every committee snapshot, diff'd against the last

Concrete: 10 hours/week reclaimed during session is over two months of working time back per heavy user, per year. A four-person GA team typically sees two at that level and the rest at 3–5 hours, landing around 30–40 hours/week reclaimed across the team, every week of session.

We're not selling time savings as a slogan. We're selling them because the math is often the first calculation teams run when they sit down to compare tools.

04 · California-deep lobbyist data

Every lobbyist, every firm. Every $5,000+ spender.

California's CalAccess registry is the public source of truth for lobbying activity in the state — every registered lobbyist, every firm, every $5,000+ spender. The data is there for anyone to access.

But it's structured as flat filings: filer IDs, raw datasets, separate quarterly reports. To trace a single lobbyist back to their firm, their clients, and the bills they're touching, you're cross-referencing four or five reports by hand. Most teams don't bother — so when a name lands in your inbox, you're walking into the call blind.

What you get

5 entity types: Lobbyists, Firms, Employers, $5K+ Spenders, Officers
Daily refresh from CalAccess
Full cross-references — entity ↔ entity ↔ entity
Filer ID, location, status, contact per record
Duplicate-filer detection — same entity under multiple IDs

In practice

The whole registry, navigable. RTG pulls CalAccess in full and presents it as a directory — five entity types, fully cross-referenced, refreshed daily. Click a lobbyist, see their firm. Click a firm, see their clients and the lobbyists working for them. Click an employer, see every firm representing them and every bill they're moving on.

A lobbyist you've never met emails about your bill. Twenty seconds in RTG: their firm, the other clients on their roster, the organizations connected through them — all cross-referenced from CalAccess. You take the call with context, not blind.

Preview Lobbyist Search →

05 · Modern UX

A tool that doesn't fight you.

RTG was built for how people actually work in today's world — fast scanning, click-once-track-once, popovers that surface what you need without leaving the page.

Tracking a bill is one click on the bullseye target. Adding a position is one popover. Tagging a teammate is one @-mention. Exporting a whip list is one button. There is no "wait, where is that buried" moment in RTG — because we don't bury anything.

The right balance of AI. We use it where it actually helps — summarizing long bills, surfacing position changes between snapshots, drafting first-pass briefs. We don't use it to replace the human judgment that actually moves whip counts. AI-forward, but human-led.

The hundred small decisions that go into a tool — what gets surfaced by default, which actions are one click vs three, which fields exist and which ones don't — reveal whether the team has actually sat in a Sacramento hearing. RTG's design choices come from Capitol, not from a design system manual.

What you get

One-click tracking via the bullseye, from any search result
One-click positions on votecards — attributed, timestamped
Bill search palette — Cmd-K from anywhere, by number or keyword
AI-summarized bills — the long PDF in one paragraph
Pulse mobile — floor alerts + tracking from the hallway

In practice

You're between hearings, walking the Capitol — no laptop, just your phone. A colleague stops you to ask where AB 1534 stands. From Pulse, you pull up the bill, see its status and your team's tracking notes, and answer with specifics. Then you tap into the Capitol Directory in your pocket and text the staffer to set up a meeting next week. All from the hallway, before the elevator arrives. The old way: “let me get back to you when I'm at my desk.”

Preview the modern UX →

“It's hard to overstate just how much RTG changes how I work. Nothing else comes close.”

President & CEO · California healthcare advocacy coalition · RTG customer

Honest about fit

RTG isn't right for everyone.

We'd rather disqualify the wrong fit early than waste your time on a trial that won't land.

✓

RTG is right if you…

Want a vendor that takes feedback and feature requests seriously — your asks shape what gets built next
Need real-time alerts and legislative intelligence — vote results, on-call notices, support/oppose tracking, position changes between hearings
Work with a team or coalition partners — whip counts, shared notes, and attribution across organizations
Work California legislation as your primary or majority focus
Want a tool that respects your time — clean UX, fast workflows, no busywork
Value working with a small team that picks up the phone

RTG isn't right if you…

Need national, multi-state, or federal coverage (RTG is California-only by design)
Work only at the regulatory level — most of our depth is around legislation
Have a workflow that's already humming on your current tool. Switching costs are real — we won't pretend they aren't.

Try RTG free for 14 days.

No credit card. Real California bills. Real votes. Full RTG, unlocked, for two weeks.

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One phone line (916) 241-3436 · Sacramento

60-min walkthrough With the engineers who built it

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