With yesterday’s largely ceremonial opening over and done with, today marks the first day of real work in the state Leg.

The schedule of events starts at 8 a.m. with committee meetings/hearings (remember, these meetings are where bills go to die).

The tools for staying abreast of what’s happening are plentiful and relatively easy to use. If you’re tracking a specific bill or two, you can sign up to receive email notices concerning that bill – just visit here, locate your bill and enter your email information in the tracking section. You’ll receive regular updates about your bill as it winds its way through the process.

Now, traditionally, if you are contacting the legislature, you want to contact your member specifically, but if you are concerned about a bill in committee you can contact the committee members – it’s best to specify in the subject line “About SBXX being heard in Blahblahblah Committee.” That way the legislator and/or his/her staff is able to get the information where and when it needs to go.

What are the rules about contacting legislators? Well there aren’t any formal rules beyond the obvious about not threatening them, but there are some that should be set. Be polite. Be to te point. Reference the bill by number. HB is a House Bill, SB is a senate bill. Once it passes one chamber, it keeps the same number so sometimes you’ll be writing a house member about a Senate bill and vice versa.

I keep talking about contacting legislators. It’s important to know how to do it so your time is well spent.

The Trib this morning has an article about Rep. Johnson’s anti-discrimination bill being reassigned to a different committee. This committee has more Republicans than the previous committee and is generally agreed to be more conservative. Hence, the bill is being sent here with the hope it will be killed or so altered as to be useless (this happened with hate crimes for a number years in a row).

I’m tracking a couple bills this year although it looks like my primary concerns – removing the rest of the sales tax on food and regulating payday lenders – are not being addressed at all. I’ll talk more about the bills I’m tracking later. In the meantime, for information about the day’s schedule, visit here and check out the schedule, reading calendar and so forth.

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