Typical Day

People always give me funny looks when I tell them I am a legislative assistant. This is followed by the inevitable questions as to what does a legislative aide do exactly. So I thought I would share what I did today.

7:00 - I get to work and type up the minutes from last week's committee meeting. Then I put together the committee member's folders with information on everything that we are voting on in committee this morning.

8:30 - We started committee and since I am the clerk I get to call the roll, take minutes, etc. I also get to explain all the changes that were made to the bills before the committee members voted on them. Today's topics were mandating 55% of all loans made by the broadband authority be given to projects in rural counties. This is part of a rural job package of bills which I helped write. The bill passed pretty easily. The other topic was a little messier. There were two bills to create state loans and tax breaks for methane digesters which turn manure into gas energy. The Sierra Club was opposed to the bills because they think all big farms pollute and this bill could help them. After contentious debate, the bills passed 3-1.

10:00 - I got to sit on the senate floor for the annual Memorial Day Service. Several veterans came to the Senate floor. As they came in, the bag pipes were playing which sounded really cool. At the end each Senator who had a soldier die in his or her district read their name aloud and laid a folded flag in the center aisle. This was followed by the playing of Taps. It was a very moving ceremony and gave flesh to the real cost of war.

11:15- After the ceremony I go back to my office to sit in on a meeting to select what survey questions we want to ask in our literature that we plan to hand out this summer. Should we ask controversial questions or simple questions? What happens if the answers we receive from our constituents don't match up with my boss's views? We end up with 6 pretty vanilla questions.

12:15 I fill out my bill reports and walk the bills we passed out of committee over the Secretary of the Senate so they can placed on next week's calendar to be voted on.

1:30 I led about 25 mentally challenged constituents on a tour of the Capitol building. They were here lobbying for mental health care reform and decided they wanted a tour. They were great. We had fun and they asked a lot of good questions but they were a little hard to keep focused. One woman wanted to know if I had seen the angels that lived in the capitol building. No, but I have seen a lot of demons around the state capitol.

2:30- I was late for education committee which was okay because it was a rather dry presentation on a recent audit of the department of education. I won't go into details but the state needs some improvement on how we count the number of children in each school.

3:30 - I finally get to sit down at my desk only to get a call that two bills that I thought were going to run on the house floor today didn't move because a couple of republicans want more changes. These bills were part of the above mentioned rural jobs package. Hopefully we can work out the problems and have them move next week.

4:15 I spoke to the nursery and landscape association about a bill that we are sponsoring to prohibit invasive plant species. I want their support for the bills. I don't want to harm their industry but we do want to stop these harmful plants from ruining our environment. After a few minutes, we agree on some penalty language for selling the plants and things are looking good for the bill. We plan to vote on our bill next week Tuesday afternoon.

4:30 - I put in a request with the legislative service bureau to draft a bill to repeal a provision in the law that prevents a company from holding two race track licenses in Michigan. We have the only thoroughbred track in the state in our district and the same company is planning to build a new track in Romulus. The bill will allow them to stay in business in Muskegon. I also put another request in to change the dog bite law to make it a misdemeanor to flee the scene if your dog attacks someone. This is in regards to an attack that happened to my friend heidi's mother. You can read about it on her blog.

That brings me to 4:45 this afternoon. I have several phone calls and emails to return on topics ranging from the right to food processing law to the make up of the potato commission. And since the Governor vetoed the bills last year, I also still have to call the adminstration to try and find some consensus on the methane digester bills that were voted out of committee.

Sorry if this was a little detailed but I thought it might give you a glimpse into what a legislative assistant does on a daily basis.