Treasurer's Office- April 12-23

April 12th was the first day back from the General Assembly spring break, but as it was a Monday, it was relatively uneventful. I had Thursday and Friday of the previous week off, but seeing as it was still spring break I didn't think I would miss much. I proved to be incorrect in my assumption, as I remained very busy Monday morning catching up on anything I had missed while I was off. Also, John (our legislative analyst in the office- can't remember if I've mentioned him before) asked me to deliver one page summaries of two pieces of legislation that would be heard in committee that week to all of the members of the committees. Certainly not hard and I like getting out of the office, but it did involve a lot of running around to all the different offices. After I returned from delivering summaries I continued to sort through emails from the previous week. That afternoon the staff divided up committee members to lobby on pieces of legislation.

Tuesday involved more running around to legislators' offices in an attempt to speak with them about one of our bills. Fortunately, the two bills I was lobbying were non-controversial and all the legislators I met were very supportive of the legislation. I also met with the legislator of my home district to ask him to sign on as a sponsor of one of our bills. He is not a member of the committee it will be in, but the bill stemmed from a sitution in his district so it seemed fitting to have him as a sponsor. He readily agreed, and because I had previously spoke with a Senator about signing onto the bill I successfully added both a House and Senate sponsor to the bill. I spoke with Representatives right up until 11 o'clock when they went into session. The House was in Senate almost all afternoon so the rest of my day was spent listening to debate.

I had two more legislators left to speak with Wednesday about bills but they successfully eluded me again. Both their secretaries informed me however that they had taken a look at the sheet I dropped off on Monday and neither had a problem with their respective bill. Again, the House was in session so I listened to that for several hours. The first of our two bills was heard in committee after session was over and it passed out extremely easily.

Thursday morning started early with a committee hearing for the other bill I was lobbying. It passed out of the committee very easily as well and was sent to the floor. I attended another committee hearing as well and then the House went into session at 12. The House was only in session until 1:30 though, something that seemed to upset some of the legislators who felt that they had wasted their time by staying in Springfield for Thursday while not accomplishing much while they were in session. I understand that legislators want to head home but they are nearing the end of session and there is still so much to do. I spent the rest of the day going through committee hearings for the next week and determining what hearings would be of interest to the office. Friday was another quiet day in the Capitol.

Monday the 19th started off with a staff meeting to discuss what the week would look like for the office. Our debt settlement legislation that passed out of the House several weeks ago had now moved into the Senate and the committee hearing for the bill was on Thursday morning. Also, the Treasurer was going to be in Springfield to testify on Wednesday in front of the Senate appropriations committee. After the staff meeting, John met with Brittany and myself about lobbying members of the appropriations committee prior to Wednesday's hearing. It probably shouldn't be called lobbying, as we were not asking the legislators to vote for something but rather we wanted to see if legislators had any questions we could answer prior to the hearing and to make sure that some really unexpected question would come up during the hearing. Brittany and I divided up the members of the committee to speak with.

Tuesday started with me running by all of the Senators' offices who were on my list to speak with about the appropriations hearing. I dropped off a fact sheet with all of the secretaries and left instructions for them to get a hold of me should the legislator want to meet with questions. Some of the secretaries told me up front that the Senator does not hold meetings prior to appropriations hearings, which was something I was expecting. Appropriations hearings are significantly different that regular committee hearings. The House and Senate both went into session around noon, but the House did not stay in long and began committees at 2. I went to the House agriculture committee and then chose to attend a Senate education hearing later that afternoon because it had multiple controversial bills scheduled to be heard. After hearing debate on several bills I left the office around 5:30.

Wednesday was a very busy day in the Capitol. All employees within the building had recieved emails earlier in the week warning of the expected delays/road closures that would accompany a lobby day being held. 12,00-15,000 union workers were expected to be in and around the Capitol to encourage lawmakers to institute a tax increase. I planned for the worse, getting to work over 30 minutes early to avoid any road closures, but the whole day wasn't as crazy as I had expected. While there was a definite increase in the number of people around the area, inside the Capitol only became congested for about half and hour around 1:00. Protesters marched around the building and then as many as could fit came inside the building, but left after a brief time. If I had really needed to get somewhere in the building during that time it would have been extremely difficult, but the House was in session so I was in my office listening anyway. It became extremely noisy during that time as well, but it wasn't anything that wasn't manageable for a short period of time. Wednesday also happened to be Cheesecake Day in the Treasurer's office. From what I am told, this is a much anticipated yearly tradition that started while Judy Baar Topinka held the office and the current treasurer carried it over as well. All legislators and staff members are invited to come get a piece of cake in the Treasurer's main office. The 1,200 pieces of cheesecake are donated (though I'm not sure from where) and served by the Treasurer's office staff. Because the legislative division has it's own separate office, we did not see how many people came to get cheesecake in the main office, but there was very little left after the day was over. After all of the excitement of cheesecake day (and people really do get excited about it- I've heard people saying they always look forward to this day of the year) the Treasurer still had to testify in front of the appropriations committee. Because I did not get to hear his testimony in front of the House committee, I wanted to attend the Senate hearing. Besides it starting 30 minutes late, it went very smoothly. One Senator asked a lot of questions about one particular program but the Treasurer finished everything in 20 minutes.

Thursday morning was spent in the Senate Financial Institutions committee, which would hear the Debt Settlement bill. The committee started before 10 and lasted until 11:30. The Senators had a lot of questions about the tricky issue to both the propents and the lobbyists against the bill. A citizen also testified about her horrible experience while using a debt settlement company. Fortunately, it passed out by a vote of 9-1-1. It will likely be coming back to the committee with an amendment to change a few minor things, but it is a good sign that it came out of the committee by such a wide margin. The House started at 12 so then it was time to listen to debate again. Both the Senate and the House worked until about 5:30 and then it was time to quit for the night.

The Senate and the House were back on Friday for session at 10. The House stayed until about 1:30 and passed a lot of bills, but most of them were non-controversial. After the House left I went through committees scheduled for the following week, my normal Friday chore.