Well, I posted yesterday at the end of my day at work, and for some reason there was an error and I lost everything I had written, so this is my second attempt. It's been another busy and exciting week with Patton Boggs. On Tuesday, Jacksonville Transit Authority (JTA) was in town to talk with their Senators and Reps about their appropriations requests. The JTA visits were very much like the SORTA ones, since they were both regarding transportation issues (buses, improving street/intersections, transportation hubs, etc.) JTA was one of the clients where I did a lot of work to help prepare the forms for appropriations requests, so it was nice to go to the meetings and actually talk with the members about the requests.
As many of you probably know, earmarks have been in the news a lot this week. On Wednesday the House enacted a ban on earmarks for for-profit companies, and on Thursday the House Republicans voted to ban all earmarks. Needless to say, the mood of the firm regarding these issues is extremely tense. The ban will likely be temporary, and seems mainly political.. both parties seem to be willing to try to do anything to have an advantage in the upcoming election. The frustration felt by lobbyists is that even if the money isn't spent in earmarks, it will still be spent by the government in another way (which is something a lot of people don't realize). So, this could mean that a lot of the hard work put into appropriation request forms (trust me, it is a lot of work.. many people who I work with have been having haunting nightmares about the intense forms) and visits might have been for nothing. On Fridays there is a weekly public policy department meeting that I unfortunately missed this week due to a conflict, but I am very anxious to hear what people will say about this next week. Expect a full update next week on what is happening and how the lobbyists and clients are handling everything.
Besides the regular appropriations work, I have something very exciting to report. Around the time I started working for PB, a former local and state elected Louisiana official and unsuccessful US Senate candidate began working with the firm on a project to get more Republican women in politics. On Thursday and Friday, I got to go to meetings with Republican women members of Congress to discuss Project Go Pink (you'll see 'GOP' in the title, and pink obviously has a female connotation).
Project Go Pink (PGP) has two arms. The first is the blog/corporation side. This portion of the project will be a website that showcases all of the female Republican women in Congress, talks about the challenges women face in politics, and provides a platform for women to get more involved in politics. The corporation hopes to hold regional conferences where it will educate Republican women who want to go into politics on what to expect (since many things are different for men and women). The project will provide mentors for women, and help them become involved and mobilized (for example: people could register to do phone banking from wherever they are located, and then if a Republican woman member needed a group to help her make calls, this group could be utilized). The other part of PGP (which has to be separate for legal reasons) is the PAC. The PAC would raise money for Republican women candidates. Unlike EMILY's list which donates to Democratic women, the PGP PAC wouldn't have a litmus test. The only two requirements for receiving funding are that the candidate must 1) be a woman and 2) be Republican. The PAC hopes to support women at all levels of government, and is something that is truly missing from the Republican party right now.
The meetings I went to on Thursday and Friday were to ask members to support PGP, so that we can say at the official launch "all female Republicans in Congress support Project Go Pink." Everyone we met with was extremely excited about the idea, and agreed to help in whatever way they could. (Sidenote: google Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).. we met with her and she is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen) The official launch is going to be March 24th, and there is a lot to be done before then. I think next week I'll be doing a lot of work to help for that. And always, I am working on getting ready for the Greek student visits which will be happening in mid-April (which I cannot believe is only one month away!)
That's it for now. Hope everyone is having a great time with their residencies as well.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Senator Frerichs Dist Office Week 8
Unfortunately, my post for this week will be relatively short. The office has been rather quiet this week. Our Chief of Staff Laurie has been out of the office the entire week while in Springfield; therefore, I have headed up the Champaign District Office this week. Senator Frerichs finally hired a new legislative assistant for Springfield; however, I will still be headed to Springfield on a bi-weekly basis to work in another area where I can be of assistance.
Next week, I will be in Springfield which will be a nice change of pace considering the work which I have been doing this week. With Laurie out of the office, I worked on a variety of menial tasks in an effort to catch up on all the work which needed to be accomplished. This meant this week I focused on clipping newspaper articles for the Saw You in the News mailings the Senator sends out. Too, I spent quite a bit of time sending out emails in response to a wide-variety of constituent concerns. After weeks of working to limit the amount of emails which were left with no response for an extended period of time, I am happy to say that the inbox is now in single digits.
Further, I have worked to assemble a variety of spreadsheets which will be utilized to mail out form letters which will soon be composed on key issues. Too, I am working on completing a list of all the agencies within Champaign and Vermillion County which are eligible to receive grant funding; this list will be utilized to mail out grant information to all of these agencies.
Thats the gist of the office work this week. I look forward to next week as I will hope it will be quite a busy week in the State Capitol. Or perhaps with the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday, it may not be. I remember past memories of working in the Capitol years ago (Sullivan Caucus) and coming into work the next day as many representatives and senators spoke of their previous night's engagements.
Perhaps to, I will begin to expand on the constituent work I do here next week to the best of which I am able to make my posts more lively; a lot of information need remain confidential.
Best
Matthew
Next week, I will be in Springfield which will be a nice change of pace considering the work which I have been doing this week. With Laurie out of the office, I worked on a variety of menial tasks in an effort to catch up on all the work which needed to be accomplished. This meant this week I focused on clipping newspaper articles for the Saw You in the News mailings the Senator sends out. Too, I spent quite a bit of time sending out emails in response to a wide-variety of constituent concerns. After weeks of working to limit the amount of emails which were left with no response for an extended period of time, I am happy to say that the inbox is now in single digits.
Further, I have worked to assemble a variety of spreadsheets which will be utilized to mail out form letters which will soon be composed on key issues. Too, I am working on completing a list of all the agencies within Champaign and Vermillion County which are eligible to receive grant funding; this list will be utilized to mail out grant information to all of these agencies.
Thats the gist of the office work this week. I look forward to next week as I will hope it will be quite a busy week in the State Capitol. Or perhaps with the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday, it may not be. I remember past memories of working in the Capitol years ago (Sullivan Caucus) and coming into work the next day as many representatives and senators spoke of their previous night's engagements.
Perhaps to, I will begin to expand on the constituent work I do here next week to the best of which I am able to make my posts more lively; a lot of information need remain confidential.
Best
Matthew
Last two weeks at AIA
The past two weeks at AIA have especially busy, so I will also group them together in one post. I have spending a lot of time putting the finishing touches on the EMPTJ course outline, and contacting participating mediation centers to get the necessary registration forms. Now comes the difficult part, the marketing campaign. My boss really wants me to take initiate with this aspect, which is a lot of pressure but allows me to be very creative. I have contacted all of the english newspapers in the EU with an editorial proposal, and I am hoping to be able to write an article about international mediation in general that does not sound too much like a mere EMPTJ advertisement. I will try to explain its relevance to international cooperation in general, and especially for the internal market of the EU, which has grown increasingly complicated and ridden with disputes since the financial crisis. I will also use social media, e.g. facebook and ADR blogs to spread word. I am very happy that we already have 3 potential students who would like to register. I am confident we will reach 30 before August, which is the maximum.
The UNCITRAL conference that will take place in June has also needed a lot of attention. Aside from booking a location, creating registration forms and brochures, I have also been researching recent developments in UNCITRAL because I will be writing the introduction to the conference and the publication, as well as providing relevant annexes. Mr. Billiet had be sign us up to use the UNCITRAL library for a day at the end of March, which means we will be flying to Vienna for the one day to spend hours upon hours in a library. I will learn a lot I'm sure, but I would really like it if we could see the city as well!
After learning that the UN recently introduced a mediation office into their human resources department, I was able to get an interview with their chief mediator later this month. I put together a long list of questions, which is more of an outline for a broader discussion and sent it to his office. I am hoping to reveal the importance of a mediator to the ability of an internationa organization to meet its goals, which in the UN is especially important. I think that without a strong internal mediation service, the global community will essentially suffer because the UN will less functional. Thus, the mediator serves as a bridge between the UN's missions, and the civil society. Anyways, that is what I expect to write about after the interview.
Monday I will go to a conference in Brussels on the Belgian Economic Mission to India as a representative of AIA. Our organization is looking into possibly expanding into India, because it international arbitration has recently begun to grow in popularity in the region as its expands economically. The conference is only half a day, so I will mainly be trying to network and spread word of AIA's latest projects. I'm looking forward to learning more about the commercial connection between the two countries, and will likely write an article about it for next month's newsletter.
The UNCITRAL conference that will take place in June has also needed a lot of attention. Aside from booking a location, creating registration forms and brochures, I have also been researching recent developments in UNCITRAL because I will be writing the introduction to the conference and the publication, as well as providing relevant annexes. Mr. Billiet had be sign us up to use the UNCITRAL library for a day at the end of March, which means we will be flying to Vienna for the one day to spend hours upon hours in a library. I will learn a lot I'm sure, but I would really like it if we could see the city as well!
After learning that the UN recently introduced a mediation office into their human resources department, I was able to get an interview with their chief mediator later this month. I put together a long list of questions, which is more of an outline for a broader discussion and sent it to his office. I am hoping to reveal the importance of a mediator to the ability of an internationa organization to meet its goals, which in the UN is especially important. I think that without a strong internal mediation service, the global community will essentially suffer because the UN will less functional. Thus, the mediator serves as a bridge between the UN's missions, and the civil society. Anyways, that is what I expect to write about after the interview.
Monday I will go to a conference in Brussels on the Belgian Economic Mission to India as a representative of AIA. Our organization is looking into possibly expanding into India, because it international arbitration has recently begun to grow in popularity in the region as its expands economically. The conference is only half a day, so I will mainly be trying to network and spread word of AIA's latest projects. I'm looking forward to learning more about the commercial connection between the two countries, and will likely write an article about it for next month's newsletter.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Weeks Four and Five at the icd
I grouped these two weeks together because we were largely working on the same thing throughout this time. This work was centered around the academic report on the Berlin International Economic Conference. The reason this took so long is that after we had initially completed the report, our supervisor decided that he wanted it redone in a completely different way, which required completely different analysis and research. This was enormously frustrating, but also seemed like a good glimpse into what actual working life could be like in the future. We have learned, however, that the format of report that we turned in at the end of the week was accepted and will be published on the website in the future, so that is encouraging and pretty cool.
Outside of the work on the report I also had the chance to go to the Berliner Festspiele and German Foreign Office (basically the German State Department). The Berliner Festspiele is one of the icd’s partners and a promoter of cultural exchange within Berlin. They gave us an overview of their activities and a rundown of what they have planned for the future. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but it was good to get a glimpse at another culturally-based organization in the area, as the role of culture in society is an ambiguous one and one that, when addressed differently, can take on an entirely new meaning. The German Foreign Office was more interesting as they outlined how the ministry uses their funding and what effects they intended their funding to have on foreign policy. We also were informed on the areas in which the office puts their main focuses. One of the reasons this was particularly interesting was that the man giving us the presentation was actually at one time an intern at the icd.
Another interesting task that I had this week was reporting on a speaker at the Cultural Bridges in Germany conference held by the icd. This is something that we do quite often; however, this particular speech was in German, so my language skills were really tested for the first time. I was able to understand a large portion of the speech, but found myself scribbling down words to look up later as well. This article also allowed me to do some research on the unification of Germany and the social effects that linger in the country. As part of this I also interviewed around 10 participants at the conference to incorporate their perspectives into the article. We were going to use these interviews as testimonial interviews for the conference, however when we got into the office this week we found out that the microphone we were using ran out of batteries and that the interviews weren’t recorded. Luckily I did the interviews with my boss, so I can’t really get in trouble. That’s all for now.
Outside of the work on the report I also had the chance to go to the Berliner Festspiele and German Foreign Office (basically the German State Department). The Berliner Festspiele is one of the icd’s partners and a promoter of cultural exchange within Berlin. They gave us an overview of their activities and a rundown of what they have planned for the future. It wasn’t terribly interesting, but it was good to get a glimpse at another culturally-based organization in the area, as the role of culture in society is an ambiguous one and one that, when addressed differently, can take on an entirely new meaning. The German Foreign Office was more interesting as they outlined how the ministry uses their funding and what effects they intended their funding to have on foreign policy. We also were informed on the areas in which the office puts their main focuses. One of the reasons this was particularly interesting was that the man giving us the presentation was actually at one time an intern at the icd.
Another interesting task that I had this week was reporting on a speaker at the Cultural Bridges in Germany conference held by the icd. This is something that we do quite often; however, this particular speech was in German, so my language skills were really tested for the first time. I was able to understand a large portion of the speech, but found myself scribbling down words to look up later as well. This article also allowed me to do some research on the unification of Germany and the social effects that linger in the country. As part of this I also interviewed around 10 participants at the conference to incorporate their perspectives into the article. We were going to use these interviews as testimonial interviews for the conference, however when we got into the office this week we found out that the microphone we were using ran out of batteries and that the interviews weren’t recorded. Luckily I did the interviews with my boss, so I can’t really get in trouble. That’s all for now.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Senator Frerichs Dist Office-Week Seven
This week in the office was quite an experience. On Monday morning, the Senator called the office to speak with his Chief of Staff to ask if she was available to come down to Springfield for session. Of course she called her contacts and made arrangements to be in Springfield Tuesday through Thursday.
Monday was a busy day to say the least. This morning Laurie gave me a series of messages which were on the voicemail of which I needed to follow up on. In the effort to contact all of these people and address their drastically different requests I had spent the majority of the morning/afternoon on the telephone.
I have learned to enjoy this position in the office. I enjoy having a decent amount of contact with constituents and making contacts for them in different state departments to address their requests. Although, sometimes the constituents do not like the answer which I must report back to them and of course that is a different situation.
Since Laurie was out of the office the majority of the week, I was determined to make sure the office was in proper order upon her return. With interns in the office, I took it upon myself to assign tasks to these individuals in an effort to accomplish the goal. In the time Laurie was out of the office the filing which was needed was finished, the newspapers on the back counter for Saw You in the News mailings was cleared, etc.
The main accomplishment of the week, I must say was clearing out the email box. Some of the emails in the inbox dated back to prior to Christmas. The email in the inbox numbered around 160 emails when she left-upon her return only 40 remained. 40 is a pretty manageable number of emails; especially since many relate to potential legislation which we cannot archive until the end of session.
Friday I was under the weather and spent the day resting in bed. I hope to hear great things from Laurie when I return to the office on Monday as I strived to keep the office in great order while she was away.
Monday was a busy day to say the least. This morning Laurie gave me a series of messages which were on the voicemail of which I needed to follow up on. In the effort to contact all of these people and address their drastically different requests I had spent the majority of the morning/afternoon on the telephone.
I have learned to enjoy this position in the office. I enjoy having a decent amount of contact with constituents and making contacts for them in different state departments to address their requests. Although, sometimes the constituents do not like the answer which I must report back to them and of course that is a different situation.
Since Laurie was out of the office the majority of the week, I was determined to make sure the office was in proper order upon her return. With interns in the office, I took it upon myself to assign tasks to these individuals in an effort to accomplish the goal. In the time Laurie was out of the office the filing which was needed was finished, the newspapers on the back counter for Saw You in the News mailings was cleared, etc.
The main accomplishment of the week, I must say was clearing out the email box. Some of the emails in the inbox dated back to prior to Christmas. The email in the inbox numbered around 160 emails when she left-upon her return only 40 remained. 40 is a pretty manageable number of emails; especially since many relate to potential legislation which we cannot archive until the end of session.
Friday I was under the weather and spent the day resting in bed. I hope to hear great things from Laurie when I return to the office on Monday as I strived to keep the office in great order while she was away.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sara Cline- March 4, 2010
Hello everyone! I'm taking the day off tomorrow to do a Pentagon and Capitol tour, so my post is coming a day early.
This has been a very exciting week. I have been on the Hill with clients three times. On Tuesday I was out with the Pikes (fraternity), who were lobbying on behalf of the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act (which I've talked about a ton). Since I've posted on this topic/lobbying with the Greeks before, I'm not going to go into much detail. The best part was that one of the men on my team (the team was four members of the international executive board and me) was a former Congressman from Indiana (Ed Pease). During the down time between meetings, he told us the ins-and-outs of what it was like as a Congressman. I have been in meetings with Members before, but this experience was truly unique. Since he is a former member, he was able to chat very candidly about anything and everything we were interested in hearing about with regards to Congress.
On Wednesday I was out with Ohio University. We met with their two Senators (Brown and Voinovich) as well as a number of their Representatives. I have so many comments about the experience:
(1) They were asking for money for about ten projects- I don't think I should go into the details of the project, however. While they will not all be funded, they'll get some money. I did some quick research to see what U of I is doing in the way of lobbying, and it seems like not much. Unless they have spent so little on an outside lobbyist that it hasn't had to be reported, they don't have one. In my opinion, having a lobbyist to help a school get money for projects it would otherwise not be able to fund is critical, and something U of I should look into. Unlike other meetings I have gone to, in every single office the Senator or Representative made time to personally meet with us because we were with the President of the University. I talked with my boss about it after, and he said that Members are very interested in talking personally to University Presidents and want to hear about the state of the campus, and help with regards to appropriations as much as they can.
(2) When we went to Senator Voinovich's office, one of his staff members took us to his "hideaway" office to speak with him personally. Voinovich's hideaway office is located directly below the Senate chamber in the Capitol (whereas his office is in one of the Senate office buildings, across the street from the Capitol). It was perhaps 1.5x the size of my bedroom at school and only had room for a small desk, tv, couch and a few chairs. The Senator didn't even have a computer in there! I thought it was the coolest thing ever... It took us about 20 minutes to wind around the tunnels below the Capitol to get to his office, I definitely felt like I was in Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". Once in the office, the Senator devoted over 30 minutes of his time to talking with OU's leadership about the OU campus and the projects it requested. He was extremely prepared for the meeting, and was familiar with all of the requests beforehand. In the middle of the meeting, he looked up at the TV (which was showing a vote going on in the Senate) and said hold on a minute, I have to go vote. He left the office, and about 2 minutes later we saw him appear on TV to vote, and then he came back down to continue the meeting. That meeting, was one of the best and most interesting meetings I have been in so far.
Today (Thursday), Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) was here to talk to their Sens/Reps about their requests. Unlike OU's projects, SORTA's were very straighforward ($ for hybrid buses, transportation centers, etc). Through the visits, I continued to learn about Appropriations requests, especially for T/HUD (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development).
I'm set to go to the Hill next week as well, so stay tuned for an update on how that goes.
This has been a very exciting week. I have been on the Hill with clients three times. On Tuesday I was out with the Pikes (fraternity), who were lobbying on behalf of the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act (which I've talked about a ton). Since I've posted on this topic/lobbying with the Greeks before, I'm not going to go into much detail. The best part was that one of the men on my team (the team was four members of the international executive board and me) was a former Congressman from Indiana (Ed Pease). During the down time between meetings, he told us the ins-and-outs of what it was like as a Congressman. I have been in meetings with Members before, but this experience was truly unique. Since he is a former member, he was able to chat very candidly about anything and everything we were interested in hearing about with regards to Congress.
On Wednesday I was out with Ohio University. We met with their two Senators (Brown and Voinovich) as well as a number of their Representatives. I have so many comments about the experience:
(1) They were asking for money for about ten projects- I don't think I should go into the details of the project, however. While they will not all be funded, they'll get some money. I did some quick research to see what U of I is doing in the way of lobbying, and it seems like not much. Unless they have spent so little on an outside lobbyist that it hasn't had to be reported, they don't have one. In my opinion, having a lobbyist to help a school get money for projects it would otherwise not be able to fund is critical, and something U of I should look into. Unlike other meetings I have gone to, in every single office the Senator or Representative made time to personally meet with us because we were with the President of the University. I talked with my boss about it after, and he said that Members are very interested in talking personally to University Presidents and want to hear about the state of the campus, and help with regards to appropriations as much as they can.
(2) When we went to Senator Voinovich's office, one of his staff members took us to his "hideaway" office to speak with him personally. Voinovich's hideaway office is located directly below the Senate chamber in the Capitol (whereas his office is in one of the Senate office buildings, across the street from the Capitol). It was perhaps 1.5x the size of my bedroom at school and only had room for a small desk, tv, couch and a few chairs. The Senator didn't even have a computer in there! I thought it was the coolest thing ever... It took us about 20 minutes to wind around the tunnels below the Capitol to get to his office, I definitely felt like I was in Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". Once in the office, the Senator devoted over 30 minutes of his time to talking with OU's leadership about the OU campus and the projects it requested. He was extremely prepared for the meeting, and was familiar with all of the requests beforehand. In the middle of the meeting, he looked up at the TV (which was showing a vote going on in the Senate) and said hold on a minute, I have to go vote. He left the office, and about 2 minutes later we saw him appear on TV to vote, and then he came back down to continue the meeting. That meeting, was one of the best and most interesting meetings I have been in so far.
Today (Thursday), Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) was here to talk to their Sens/Reps about their requests. Unlike OU's projects, SORTA's were very straighforward ($ for hybrid buses, transportation centers, etc). Through the visits, I continued to learn about Appropriations requests, especially for T/HUD (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development).
I'm set to go to the Hill next week as well, so stay tuned for an update on how that goes.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Treasurer's Office- February 22-26
This week in the Treasurer's office was pretty run of the mill when comparing it to the experiences I have had so far. Both Monday and Friday were fairly slow (as days when the legislators are not here tend to be), but I managed to keep myself busy- Monday, double checking everything to make sure I am prepared for the week ahead and Friday doing everything to get ready for the next week. On Fridays our office goes through all of the committee hearings posted for the following week and determines what hearings we need to attend and what bills need to be watched. Mondays usually involve double checking what we did the previous Friday.
Tuesday was much busier as usual because the legislators were back in town. The House did not do much while in Session, but had multiple committee hearings after. I went to the House Agriculture and Conservation hearing hoping to hear a number of bills called. I was not disappointed, as a bill that our office is not directly concerned with but wanted to monitor because of controversy was called. The bill calls to reinstate the humane slaughtering of horses in Illinois. A bill that was passed in 2007 made this illegal. However, a lack of this option in Illinois has forced horse owners with horses that are "unwanted" (They are often old and are no longer able to serve any purpose, like riding) to now send horses to Mexico for this option instead. As the sponsor of the bill pointed out, putting a horse in a trailer for 40+ hours to make the trip to Mexico to face unknown conditions in a slaughterhouse is hardly more humane than having such a procedure done in Illinois. Unwillingly, I feel as though I became somewhat of an expert in the horse slaughtering business after listening to the long discussion. It wasn't an easy topic to listen to and it was almost a little hard to believe that such a topic was being discussed, but in the end I understood why the representative had proposed the bill. As did the other members as the bills passed unanimously out of committee.
Wednesday was another busy day (which I prefer any day over a slow one). Several committee hearings in the morning, followed by listening to the House in session at 12. After the House adjourned, Sheleda, Brittany and myself headed to the Stratton building (where almost all of the Representatives have offices) to speak with legislators about a bill that is an initiative of our office and was in committee the next week. Unfortunately with the craziness that afternoons often bring with multiple committee hearings, it was hard to track down many of the legislators. However, I left my card with secretaries or made appointments to speak with legislators before the hearing. I had to run to committee at 4 as well so I was not surprised at my lack of success tracking down legislators.
On Thursday I had to be in the office at 8 (normal start time is 9) for a committee hearing. The hearing actually started relatively on time, but none of the bills I was there to monitor would be called. Oh well. However, one of the representatives I failed to track down yesterday was in the committee, so after returning to my office I called his secretary to make sure he was available. I quickly ran to the Stratton to catch him before he went off to another committee and was lucky enough to speak with him. He is actually the representative of my home district so it was nice to make that connection. He also agreed to support the bill which makes my job that much easier! After I finished speaking with him, I ran to various other committees until the House began session at 11. A lot of bills were called while in session but none were of importance to our office or anything controversial so there was nothing really to report. One thing I did enjoy hearing however was a Representative speak to the House about how early they were adjouring (1:30- normal for a Thurday) so that the legislators could go home for the weekend. She cited the horrible fiscal crisis the state is in as one of many reasons the legislature should not be adjourning so early. While I doubt this will make any difference in the minds of most legislators, it was nice to hear the frustration of so many citizens vocalized on the floor.
Tuesday was much busier as usual because the legislators were back in town. The House did not do much while in Session, but had multiple committee hearings after. I went to the House Agriculture and Conservation hearing hoping to hear a number of bills called. I was not disappointed, as a bill that our office is not directly concerned with but wanted to monitor because of controversy was called. The bill calls to reinstate the humane slaughtering of horses in Illinois. A bill that was passed in 2007 made this illegal. However, a lack of this option in Illinois has forced horse owners with horses that are "unwanted" (They are often old and are no longer able to serve any purpose, like riding) to now send horses to Mexico for this option instead. As the sponsor of the bill pointed out, putting a horse in a trailer for 40+ hours to make the trip to Mexico to face unknown conditions in a slaughterhouse is hardly more humane than having such a procedure done in Illinois. Unwillingly, I feel as though I became somewhat of an expert in the horse slaughtering business after listening to the long discussion. It wasn't an easy topic to listen to and it was almost a little hard to believe that such a topic was being discussed, but in the end I understood why the representative had proposed the bill. As did the other members as the bills passed unanimously out of committee.
Wednesday was another busy day (which I prefer any day over a slow one). Several committee hearings in the morning, followed by listening to the House in session at 12. After the House adjourned, Sheleda, Brittany and myself headed to the Stratton building (where almost all of the Representatives have offices) to speak with legislators about a bill that is an initiative of our office and was in committee the next week. Unfortunately with the craziness that afternoons often bring with multiple committee hearings, it was hard to track down many of the legislators. However, I left my card with secretaries or made appointments to speak with legislators before the hearing. I had to run to committee at 4 as well so I was not surprised at my lack of success tracking down legislators.
On Thursday I had to be in the office at 8 (normal start time is 9) for a committee hearing. The hearing actually started relatively on time, but none of the bills I was there to monitor would be called. Oh well. However, one of the representatives I failed to track down yesterday was in the committee, so after returning to my office I called his secretary to make sure he was available. I quickly ran to the Stratton to catch him before he went off to another committee and was lucky enough to speak with him. He is actually the representative of my home district so it was nice to make that connection. He also agreed to support the bill which makes my job that much easier! After I finished speaking with him, I ran to various other committees until the House began session at 11. A lot of bills were called while in session but none were of importance to our office or anything controversial so there was nothing really to report. One thing I did enjoy hearing however was a Representative speak to the House about how early they were adjouring (1:30- normal for a Thurday) so that the legislators could go home for the weekend. She cited the horrible fiscal crisis the state is in as one of many reasons the legislature should not be adjourning so early. While I doubt this will make any difference in the minds of most legislators, it was nice to hear the frustration of so many citizens vocalized on the floor.
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