Maureen Hayden, writing for CNHI, has an article on bill requests being made by legislators and being drafted by employees at Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency (LSA). She reports that there have been about 900 bill requests so far this session.
I used to work for LSA back in ’96 – ’99. Ms. Hayden reports that LSA currently consists of “about 80 lawyers, fiscal analysts and support staff.” Most of the bill requests are drafted by the lawyers in the section of LSA called the Office of Bill Drafting and Research (OBDAR). There were 18 of us when I was in that office. The lawyers had fiscal analyst counterparts in the Office of Fiscal Management and Analysis (OFMA). The fiscal analyst provides a report on the fiscal impact of a given piece of legislation. A third branch of LSA is the Office of Code Revision. After my stint at OBDAR, I became a deputy director at OCR. Our job, during session, was to edit the bill drafts submitted by the OBDAR attorneys.
The way it worked was, a legislator would come in and meet with the director of OBDAR and tell him what he or she wanted, generally, in terms of legislation. The director summarized the request and assigned it to a bill drafting attorney. (I don’t know how, exactly, the OFMA analysts got assigned, but there was a corresponding assignment to a fiscal analyst.) The drafting attorney would, in a lot of cases, just draft the bill without having to do a lot of extra research. A good chunk of these bills are simply repeats of requests from prior years. A fair number of others are pretty basic — e.g., change the speed limit from 65 to 70 mph. But, there are still plenty of requests that are complicated.
For the complicated ones, you work out the questions that need to be answered, and try to get in touch with the requesting legislator. This can be a challenge – these folks are very busy. Then, you have to get the legislator to slow down enough to pay attention to the, usually boring, details of the issues you need to work through. A lot of legislators are frenetic, big picture types — not generally inclined to put everything on hold to really bear down on niggling details.
A lot of times, lobbyists are involved – either the legislator is carrying water for a particular group or that group is a trusted source of information and policy advice for the legislator. So, you’ll have to talk with those folks. Not uncommonly, you’ll get a draft piece of legislation that has originated with the lobbying group. Often, these drafts are horrible messes that don’t really pin down who gets to do what to whom and under what circumstances. They require an extra step. Before you can get to work, you have to discern what these drafts are actually trying to accomplish. Only then can get to work on drafting language that actually accomplishes the goal.
Because of the legislative calendar, the bulk of bill drafting season coincides with the holiday season. Elections take place in early November. Legislators get organized through early November. Bill requests really get going in the latter half of November. What’s really fun is when a legislator pops into LSA on his way to the airport in Indy to drop off a pile of bill requests before he or she flies off to a Christmas vacation some place warm with the family. Anyway, you end up with long days and nights of drafting through the end of November all of December and into January before the General Assembly kicks into gear the first or second week of the new year.
The good folks at LSA are a little like legislative elves, slaving away in Santa’s sweatshop, churning out bills for good little representatives and senators to introduce at the beginning of the session.
As for the number of bills produced, from talking with folks who have been at LSA for a long time, it seems that the number is essentially a function of the technological ability to produce the documents. It used to be that setting the type and producing the paper was more of a barrier to creating bills. With word processing and reproduction getting easier and easier, that has allowed the number of bills to increase over thee years.
Good article — very informative!
Thanks Wilson!
Can I get some CLE credit for reading this? No? Darn…
Without question, the folks of LSA are the hardest working people in the State House. This is an area the public does not see and your explanation of LSA’s commitment in the month before the session starts should never go unnoticed by a legislator. Hopefully you will proivide an even more interesting education in April when conference committees roll around! Ever hear something along the lines of “I have just one more tweak to the language before the meeting in 5 minutes.”
“If you want it bad, that’s how we’ll give it to you;” I think was the LSA motto for those quick turn around projects.
The financial analysis they put out leaves a bunch to be desired. They rarely talk to the people who actually deal with the stuff daily to see if they are even on the right track.
Mostly, for education bills, the financial impact statements get left out for political reasons–cost of the k-16 higher ed plan?–not estimated. Cost of requiring AP courses or more math courses for all graduates–or moving to the mandatory core 40 diploma? No one wanted to tackle that. My numbers were either attacked for being too high when they included things no one wanted to consider or were taken verbatim and still cited (cost of state supplied textbooks, for example–still using the 1999 estimates (rough) that I put together). LSA people do all of the work and have to put up with the lobbyists, or end up going to work for them-conflict of interest–and it seemed as though the few who knew the education finance system well refused to share that information with others. They worked hard to make it seem complicated and confusing, yet it is not. Oh well. I wonder if I provided information to you during the 96-99 years? Mostly it was c. may. if you know who I mean and the now lady lawyer lobbyist along with the school finance lobbying group.
This was interesting, so thanks for the insight. Question: do the “elves: I can imagine that people would get requests for bills that they may not think are practical or think would not work well qnd just suffer through those, but do they get to “recuse” themselves from suggested bills they may not agree with in principle?
Sorry for the typos. I meant to say “Question: I can imagine that people would get requests…”
I’m not sure that it ever came up. For my own part, I put my principles on a shelf when I got a bill request. I got more than a few where I disagreed with the policy entirely. But, at the end of the day, I was just putting words on paper. The objectionable policies didn’t become effective unless and until elected officials voted for them – and that was their prerogative, not mine.
Akla, the name you mentioned is familiar. But, I didn’t handle any education bills that I can recall. I think that was mostly in Nettie’s wheelhouse back then.
I spent a lot of time working on utilities, transportation, public safety, and professional licensure.
Thanks for remembering us, Doug. I remember when you were the “friend of the unlicensed”…
It is frightening that we get 800 to 900 bills being put forth every session. When the legislature is in session, your liberty is at risk.
Our Republic has been in existence for 230 odd years. Why exactly do we need more laws?
In fact, all these laws are clogging up our court system. We cleaned up our criminal code in ’97, getting 2000 laws down to 200, and our legislators have worked it back up to 2000. “What used to be a misdemenor is now a felony”.