Waiting in Line

I have a funny job some days. The rules of the legislature allow for each incoming senator and representative to draft 10 bills for next year starting this morning. These bills are drafted by the Legislative Service Bureau (LSB) which is a non-partisan team of lawyers. The bills are drafted on a first come, first serve basis and each caucus likes to bundle their requests together.

I got a call yesterday afternoon asking if I would take a shift during the night to make sure that the Senate Republicans were the first in line to have our bills drafted. Since I live downtown, I didn't mind. We had staffers rotating on 90 minute shifts starting at 2:00 am outside the building. The LSB office opened up at 8 am this morning. I drew the 5 -6:30 shift which wasn't that bad. We were the first ones to arrive just beating the House Republicans who slept in until 4:00 a.m. The newspaper delivery person let us in the building around 5:30 so we didn't have to wait in the cold. A few minutes later the House Democrats came by and we decided to be nice and let them in the building as well. We sat in the hallway outside LSB just talking about the elections and who the next leadership would be in both the House and Senate. It was kind of fun. It reminded me of waiting in line for concert tickets.

Thankfully, I got relieved of my duties at 6:30 and went home to take a shower. I never did see any staff from Senate Democrats. Maybe they don't plan to introduce any new bills. Who knows? All I know is that Senate Republicans were first in line.