You’re right about the crush of requests that come in at the deadline. I do not envy the LSA workload this time of year.

I try to pre-draft all of my bills personally to make it a little easier on them.

One good change that has been made since your departure is that lobbyists are no longer allowed to deal directly with LSA – any requests have to come from a legislator. I think that helps add more integrity to the process.

As far as the session timetable is concerned, I agree with you that the actual session does not need to be extended. I simply suggested that if the standing committees were allowed to convene to hear testimony (not necessarily even vote) after session had adjourned, then a lot of work could be done before session even begins. A small-scale version of that is happening this month with Ways and Means convening to hear testimony on HB 1001.

Public input is too often a casualty of the compressed timeframe that the Legislature operates under. I often talk to citizen’s groups, businesses, etc., who realized too late a bill was “in the pipe,” and didn’t have time to make it down to Indianapolis to testify on it before it had gone through the process.

Allowing some of the work to be done at the committee level before the session convenes is one way we might look at making the process more open. It also could be a great opportunity for administrative and budgetary oversight to occur.

Even worse was getting a request to just turn some lobbyist’s draft into legislation. All too often those drafts were just poorly written — usually too many pronouns and not enough clarity on who got to do what to whom and under what circumstances. And with the lobbyists who hadn’t been around very long, convincing them that the language needed to be changed was like pulling teeth. Some of them had been given language from their higher ups and didn’t really know what the intent of a particular passage was, so they held on to the “magic words” like grim death. But I digress (and I’m sure some of these things have been magnified in my memory beyond their original proportions.)

As to the need for more time during the short-session, I’m not so sure. I think all of the reasons for expanding the short-session are generally applicable to just going ahead and having a full-time legislature. The need for oversight of the executive branch is particularly compelling.

I tend to think that the more time the legislature is in session, the more legislation will be passed. It’s just the nature of the beast. When a hammer is your only tool, the whole world starts to look like nails. In the legislature’s case, legislation is the only tool.

Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I also tend to think that a truly deliberative legislature just isn’t in the cards. Not because the elected representatives don’t want to take the time to deliberate. Being in session just seems to get lobbyists and constituents into a frenzy, and the time you would like to spend deliberating is sucked away. I don’t think a longer “short” session would reduce the time pressures. I think it would just extend the frenzy.

Not exactly a representative sample, but judging from yours and Representative Heim’s blogs, I’d say you guys do your best deliberating while the legislature is adjourned.