 I'm Bob Howe. I am broadcasting to you from my Maple Sugar Shack in Brunswick, Maine, and I represent the Sierra Club and a number of other non-profit and professional associations at the State House. Prior to that, I worked for a while in municipal government and also served in the Maine House of Representatives. So I'm hoping this presentation will be helpful, particularly to those who are looking for the basic introduction to the Maine legislature. And there we go. A quick question before we go along. Just how do you want to field questions? Do you want to go through a portion of this and then take them in chunks? I'm happy to answer questions at any point. If I don't hear somebody or see their hands clapping, then maybe somebody else will interrupt me. So these are what I've set out as objectives for this workshop. A little bit about me, but I've already been through that. So there are 151 members of the Maine House of Representatives and 35 members of the Senate, like all but one other state. We have a bicameral, that is to say, two-house legislature. Nebraska has only one legislative body. Both members of the House and Senate elected to two-year terms elections for these seats. And a lot of other things are in even numbered years. Term limits were enacted through public referendum. A number of years ago, which limits legislators to four consecutive terms in the same body. And what we have seen since then is some people maxing out in the house and then running for Senate of Issa versa or staying away for a term or two and then coming back. These are the current members of what's called legislative leadership. Starting at the top, we have the senators, including the presiding officer, the title of whom is president of the Senate. At the moment, the Democratic leader spot is vacant. Senator Nate Libby of Lowest and has stepped down from that, although not from his seat as a legislator. And this is due to his taking on a major new day job outside of his work as a legislator. His assistant, who may very well move up to that other position, is Eloise Vitelli. The Republican floor leaders are Senators Jeff Timberlake and Matt Puglia. And notice, oh, I see a typo after Senator Vitelli's name. Senators are listed not by the names of the towns in which they live in, but the names of the counties. And that's because at one time, we had 32 senators, two from each county. And that all changed quite a number of years ago. And maybe that they represent parts of more than one county, but the one that's shown here is the one they live in. For example, Senator Vitelli also represents the town of Dresden, which is in Lincoln County. The house leaders are the Speaker, who was the presiding officer, Ryan Fecto, a benefit, Michelle Dunphy is the floor leader, her assistant is Rachel Talbot Ross, the Republican House floor leaders of Kathleen Dillingham and Joel Stetkis. The legislature has 18 joint standing committees. A standing committee is essentially a permanent committee. From time to time, they will also establish select committees, which are usually created for a very specific purpose for a fairly short period of time. Each of these committees has jurisdiction over various departments and agencies of state government and the laws related to them. These are the ones where we seem to spend most of our time and some issues that arise in those committees that we care about. So who can introduce legislation? Well, it turns out the answer is all of the above. However, all bills must be presented by a legislator with up to nine co-sponsors. And in rare occasions, the leadership will wave that limit and there'll be a much larger number of co-sponsors happens once or twice a session. So why do you need to get involved? Well, I've listed the climate crisis is the is the most important reason. The state has to do its part to avoid the worst effects of climate change. What happens in Augusta matters? And because you are a citizen and you vote with regard to how to communicate with legislators, you can work through this legislative team. And one of our tasks is to develop the priority bills for Sierra Club. When you do make a case to legislators, be clear and concise and state your reasons. Aside from your participation in the legislative team or in conjunction with it, I would urge you to get to know your legislators. Each of you has a representative and a senator. And we can talk about how you figure out how those people, who they are, if you don't know. We'll also talk about how to monitor the proceedings in the various 18 legislative committees. A little later on, I'll show you the legislature's website and some key links. And you can testify at public hearings and you can watch the subsequent work sessions. And in the COVID area, testifying at public hearings is no longer a matter of going to the state house. It's done much like we're communicating with one another today. Remember to know who your allies are and get them involved, get their support. Know who your opponents are. Try to anticipate who they're likely to be and anticipate what their objections are likely to be, because if you are speaking to a legislative committee as a supporter or proponent, you'll go first. You'll be followed by the opponents. So when you speak, if you can anticipate what they're likely to say and sort of offer up a response in advance, that sometimes is helpful. Seek support from legislators. For your proposals, it may be your own legislators. It may be some on the committee that will hear the bill. You don't have to speak. You can submit written testimony or you can do both. And we can go and look at the the link to that. What's called the online portal for submitting bills. I'm a big believer in one pager, so if you do submit written testimony, I don't say it has to be a single page, but keep it concise and follow up with legislators. Whether you've talked to them individually or after public hearing, they don't always get thank yous when they when they deserve them. Just as a sampling of issues that will be confronting and in no there's no magic about the order in which I've listed them. But we've been working for a couple of years now on a proposal to force the conversion of our two major electric utilities to a main power company that would be owned by its consumers. There are any number of bills that will come forward this session dealing with toxic chemicals. The Governor's Climate Council is going to be submitting a lot of proposals and we're still anxiously awaiting what's what's coming from them. We're going to be working on something called the Green Bank. This will be a program that will provide loans for the purpose of increasing energy efficiency. And or reducing the use of fossil fuels. A bond issue is something that's done when the state wants to borrow money from investors for the turn around use the proceeds for various purpose. It's often used to build roads and bridges. There are bond issues pending this session on combating sea level rise and funding efficiency projects, and I'm sure there'll be others. Now, this may not be as visible as I would like. This is a a graphic taken from the legislature's website, and I'm going to see if I can. All right, this is a little better, I think. I don't want to go through every word of this because there's enough here that it may take more than one run through before you understand really how this process works. But it starts with somebody that has an idea. And then finds a legislator to sponsor it. And that idea gets submitted to an office of the legislature called the Reviser of Statutes. They put it in all the proper format and print it, assign it a legislative document number, and it's posted on the website. And we'll look at where to find what are called LDs a little bit later. If the sponsor, the primary sponsor is a member of the house that's referred to as a house bill, it will go to the house first. Conversely, if the primary sponsor was a senator, it'll go there first. Both bodies have to agree on what committee to send the bill to because that's where it's given a public hearing. And the rules of the legislature are that the public is given two weeks notice of public hearings, but that can be waived by members by the leadership and sometimes is late in the session when they're running up against their their calendar deadline for adjourning. So the purpose of a public hearing is, as the name suggests, to hear from the public, us. And in the public hearing, those supporting the bill, the proponents speak first, followed by opponents. And then sometimes there'll be people who want to speak neither for nor against the bill, but simply to provide some useful information and quite often this is what one of the state agencies that perhaps would be asked to implement the bill will will do. They're not taking a position for against it, but they they want the committee to know certain things about how a bill would be implemented following the public hearing. The committees almost always have at least one work session. Now, these work sessions are open to the public. But it's no longer an opportunity for the public to speak. It's for the members of the committee to talk among themselves and make a decision on what to do with the bill. And once they've finished talking, they vote. In case I didn't mention this, there are 13 members on every committee. Three of them are senators. Ten of them are representatives. And when they vote, they often don't all agree on exactly the same thing. So when. When the voting is done, the committee issues a report or multiple reports. And over on the left, you see what the voting options are. If. If a member of the committee doesn't like anything about the bill, they may move to. Give the bill an ought not to pass report. Another option is ought to pass just as it's written. But almost, well, the vast majority of bills eventually become law, get changed somewhere along the way, most often in committee. The appropriate motion there is ought to pass as amended. And the person making that motion will have to make it clear to others and to the committee's professional staff how they want to change the bill. What's what's the amendment do then? Some bills are given what's called a fiscal note because they'll have some impact on the state budget. Some bills might actually bring in more money, more revenue to the state, but more often than not, bills will cost. Money and somewhere in the budget making process, money will have to be found. To pay those costs or in the end, the bill will die. All right, so the bills reported out of committee with one or more reports. And it goes back to the House and the Senate. And virtually always, under the rules, the Senate has the final word. And when it gets to the Senate, if it has a fiscal note, it'll usually get put, it'll be tabled on something called the Senate Appropriations Table. And the bill will say, well, if we pass this, it's going to cost $100,000 a year. And by the time the session is nearly over, that appropriations table may have quite a stack of bills, all with a price tag. And at the very end of the session, the legislature will have to decide which of those bills are funded and which die, because invariably the total of requests far exceeds what's available. Now I'm going to see if I can get back to the slideshow. All right. I'm going on and on here. Are there any questions? I guess there's a bunch of notes in the chat line, which I have not looked at. Maybe somebody else could monitor that. Yeah, Bob, I put just a question about which committees we were following. So I noted those and gave the one of the links on your last slide to the committee page and also a link to this specific slide you're on right now. All right. Anything else anybody wants to know right now? All right. So here are some links. I don't know whether these, well, of course they're not. I have a question. You're on me. Yeah. Bill cannot be funded if dies and dies forever or Nothing's forever in this process. But it what it probably means is that it will have to be brought back in the next legislature, not in the next It will have to be brought back in the next legislature. In other words, after there's been an election. Because the rules prohibit. Well, let me let me put it this way. We are just starting what's called the 130th main legislature, which will operate for two years. And it operates in two sessions. The session that's just begun is referred to as the first regular session that runs for about six months. And then there's the second regular session, which is be about the first four months of next year. If a bill dies for whatever reason in the first regular session, it cannot be brought back in the second regular session. But it could be brought back when the hundred and thirty first legislature meets starting in 2023. Then start process all from the beginning. Correct. It's it's de novo. It's like, like it never happened before. Yeah. It's like it never happened before. Now some legislators will say, oh, yeah, I think we dealt with that two years ago, but you'll have other people who are new. And so, yeah, it starts right all over again. Sorry, good. Yeah, no questions. Go ahead. Yeah, we have a couple more in the chat. So I'll have you just read them off. How were legislators selected for the committees? Well, the presiding officers are more generally the members that those 10 members of leadership decide. So, for example, because the Democrats control both the Senate and the House. Right now they get two of the three senators. And either six or seven of the 10 house members. And those Democrats are chosen by their, their leaders, their party leaders. Likewise, the Republicans, their party leaders will choose the ones Senator and the three or four House members. Now, there was a little kerfuffle a few weeks ago and one Republican Senator did not get the committee he wanted because his leaders didn't want him there. And he appealed to the Senate president was a Democrat, asking him if he would override his party leaders and I think he could because he's a presiding officer, but he said no, I'm not going to do that. And there are ample precedents for why that's probably not a good idea to override those those appointments. I'm sorry, is that I think I answered the question was there anything more. I think so. I think that's good on that. Yeah, now we have Yeah, this links. I'll ask a couple, a couple more. All the links we will. Yeah, we have these later as well we can put those in the chat, Lynn, but the next question was how do efficiently monitor committee schedules, legislation, etc. You know what, I think maybe what I'd like to do is to go to the legislature's website on screen share. Yeah. All right. And while you're doing that. I think I can answer. Patricia's question about how to effectively build relationships with legislators by suggesting that we have another workshop that's focused on that in particular I'm sure Bob has some other notes on that. I will link that in the chat. And Emily's question about is there someone who has worked with a bill through this process who can share what is like Bob is definitely seen many bills that went all the way through and probably a lot more that didn't so I think he can touch on that as well. Yeah, is the question around that any more specific than that. No, just saying, you know, it is, it's hard to grasp all this. Absolutely is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay, she's a specific example of. Yeah, a bill going through. Let's see. Because of COVID public hearings are being conducted via zoom for the members of the committee and their staff, and anyone else who wants to participate as a witness. The rest of the world gets to watch and listen on YouTube and these things are being recorded. There's very few public hearings so far this session. But perhaps I can find. Well, since we're on the topic, there's an hour link here for YouTube channels. What we're looking at is the last page was the homepage of the main legislature. So this is what you get when you click on the link to YouTube. channels. So here. You can watch the proceedings here. The house proceedings here and then we start with legislative committees. And this one is the appropriations and financial affairs committee I know they've started public hearings. This is a committee that writes the budget, and I'm going to click on that committee. Bob we're not I don't think we're seeing your, we're still seeing a slide. There we're not on your web page. That's interesting I don't know why you're not seeing what I'm seeing. You may have to stop the share and then try again. I did link those three links that were in that last slide in the chat. The follow bills. What are you seeing now. The YouTube page. Okay, I'm going to back up one tab so this is what you first see at the YouTube page. The various channels of the Senate the house and then starting here with the various committees, and I clicked on this one the budget writing committee. So this is a recording right here. Of yesterday's session, working on the budget. Here's another one. So if you can. At the very least make a note of the homepage address it's legislature dot main dot gov. Once you get there there's dozens of other places you can go and this is one of them. I don't know whether there's anything more you want to see here. This is a committee will spend a fair amount of time in. They had a work session on something I don't know what but this this is, these are recordings now. You also can use YouTube to watch live and it'll tell you. You'll have to look carefully at the link to make sure it's. It's, it's the live event in real time and not one of the recordings. So I'm going to go back. To the legislature's homepage. And what was a, what was some of the other questions about the legislature, how to find bills. Yeah, I think this started. I know we have a couple of questions were kind of simultaneously answering, but. The, how to efficiently monitor committee schedules and legislative legislation, I think is kind of where you're on this page. Yep. Let's go to calendar first. This is the current week and you'll see that these blue hyperlinks are all to various legislative committees. There may be other kinds of events on here to I'm not sure but so let's say we want to find out more about the public hearing. I guess that would have been yesterday in the transportation committee. We click on that hyperlink. And we get to information about the transportation committee. This is the name of the clerk. This is where it's physically located. And if you want to listen to what's going on in that committee you can click here you'll need some sort of media player on your computer. They had a public hearing yesterday on looks like two bills. No, three, four anyway. And I love our mains offshore islands. So I'm going to pick on this second one. My wife goes out to vinyl haven once a month to the clinic to do women's health. So this is a hyperlink to that piece of legislation. And by the way, this is one of half a dozen ways to get to a bill on the legislative pages. So up here you've got the title over here is the LD number over here in this little window is set on one 30th. But if you wanted to look for bills in previous legislatures, you can do that too. Because there would have been an LD 43 and 129. I think from my perspective, the key word here is efficiently, you know, I've got a job and two kids who aren't in school and how do I know when there's something I should be paying attention to without taking on a whole mother job of trying to monitor everything that goes on. I would say that if you were to sign up for email distribution lists for the committees you think you're going to be interested in. But that might be the best way to do it that way. You'll get notices of hearings in your inbox without having to go to the legislature's website and poke around. And let me see if I can't find where you sign up for that. And as as we're looking at how to sign up, I would also answer that by saying if you don't. Yeah, if you don't want or maybe have the time to follow a certain committee or research a bill in depth that is definitely why people contribute time and resources to places like the Sierra Club and others. We have a little more capacity to do that on our members and supporters behalf so we are tracking through Bob and with our legislative team important bills. And let folks know really important ones and ways they can take action. And then our actual volunteers who meet every couple weeks and do some more of this work on the back end. We're installing many more bills and writing testimony on specific ones. So I guess I don't know if that answers your question but I would say the most efficient thing is kind of be on our email list. If you want kind of broad general actions, you want to be a little bit more involved you can come to our legislative team. And if you want to be really really involved, or more involved. You can subscribe to these lists. I think that's a pretty easy task in the short run if you think you might be interested in natural resources in the environment. You can sign up for one of these email lists and at least start knowing what's going on. I don't know if that answers your question. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you for taking us to the page where these various lists appear. And if you wanted to be on the list for the agriculture conservation and forestry committee, you'd click here. You'd click on subscribe. You'd enter your email address. And you'd click here. If it wants to make sure I really mean this. So I'll ended up on the list twice but that's okay. I confirm. Now, there. All right, so where do you want to go next. I know we jumped around a little bit but the next question here with me for a second. There's one quick question and then I think I'd like to get back to answering Emily's question just following a bill through the process maybe an example. But are committees separate for each house or is there one committee for each topic. The joint committees. Unlike some stage which have separate committees for the house and for the Senate. That's why I hear they're called joint committees. They have both senators and representatives on them. So bills are bills are given hearings only in one committee. And Patricia I will put the workshop link in the chat for how to build relationships with legislators. But I guess I would say that we're the constituent of a representative and a state center and in Maine from my experience having living lived in other places. People are, you know, fairly available representatives only represent think what Bob 10,000 or so people, and they like to hear from you so I would recommend reaching out to your representative and saying hello and talking to them about things that are important to you and also if you want to help prepare to do that, we are available to do so. Is that fair Bob. Absolutely. So, I don't know where you want to go next. Yeah, I think the example of maybe walking up just more specifically a bill, a specific bill that you're familiar with maybe a recent one, and kind of how it's gone through the process. Well, one way of doing that would be, let me do this I'm going to, I'm going to, how do I want to do this. You could problem is one from last time that that was yeah I was going to do that. I have a little impediment here which is that the, the control panel for screen sharing is up at the top of my screen hiding browser window so I'm going to move it down here. Okay, this should help. I am now going to the, the legislative report that we put together for the Sierra Club. And I'm going to go to the last session so that's the over here where it says 130. I'm going to go to the 129. And let's see what bill do we want to look at. Well, let's see telemarketer. Let's just pick this one on solar panels at random. This is this report by the way. I'm going to put it together the title of the bill is a hyperlink and it takes you to the legislatures website page for that bill. And here's the bill, you want to know what it does you. This is what a legislative document looks like. As the title. This is the committee goes to these are legislators sponsoring it. And then you get into the substance of the bill very simple. This is a summary that describes what it does provides the property tax exemption for solar panels and associate equipment installed on residential property that qualifies for homestead exemption. Now, while this bill died, I believe the substance of it was incorporated into another bill, because I know here in Brunswick. Initially, they wanted to tax my solar panels. And then when the legislature acted they sent around a form. They needed to fill out in order to remove that additional tax. So title, this number is a title number. All the tax laws following the title 36. This stands remain revised that it's annotated. This is a section within title 36. And then there's a subsection and a paragraph. And it was a new paragraph added that created this exemption. Now, to back up. That was, that's the text and disposition I'm going to jump down to status and committee. This shows you when the public hearing was held. You can see there were three work sessions. And before I go down further on the page I'm going to click right here for people submitted written testimony, others may have spoken. And you want to know what they said. You can go to that link. And this is an example of how this would work submitted by fellow revision energy, who by the way did our solar installation here. As I say there were three work sessions. They killed the bill but I do believe it's because the substance of it was put in somewhere else maybe it may have been in the budget. Now. And this tells you what happened after the public hearing. They voted the table at the first work session. They tabled it again. There was a request to carry the bill over what that means is they didn't finish working on it in 2019. They took it up again in 2020. At a third work session, then voted to kill it. And then once it left committee, you could click on chamber status and actions. And here are the various steps in the process and started out being referred to the committee taxation. And they carried over in June. And took it up again in 2020 and that's when it died. I don't know if that's helpful. That's kind of an overview of the process that bill went through. Does that generate any other questions. I don't see any at the moment I'm trying to answer some other ones that I know the answer to, but yeah, how else. Any other is anyone that I maybe missed accidentally in the chat or does anyone have a follow up to anything. Bob what, what does a lobbyist do. At the very minimum, my partner Pam kill and I look at every piece of legislation. I don't say we ready read every word of every bill. But we look at it closely enough to determine whether it may have an impact on one of our clients. If it does we enter into a database from which we print. Can you see this now. I don't know what you're seeing I'm seeing the Sierra Club legislative report. Yep, we can see that. In this database. We were able to create reports for the clients. I'll just let me see here. So for example, this is the database. And you can see that the LD is listed here. And what we've got so far for the 130th the legislature were up to LD 238 this is a disregard this one. This is not every bill that's been printed. These are the ones that we think may be of interest to the client. We make the client aware of the bill. We have this organization we have legislative team meetings on a regular basis. At which time we really you decide which issues warrant. Our attention. And Sarah clubs a little different than most of our clients. It really is heavily dependent upon. What you as volunteers are most interested in and want to take on as long as whatever you do and say is consistent with Sierra Club policy. But if for example, this hydro fluorocarbon bill that might interest the legislative committee. So I might be asked to do a little research on the bill. Now, some clients are much more passive than the Sierra Club. They just want us to take care of things in Augusta so we may testify for a client. I generally prefer to arrange for a member of our one of the client organizations to go up and almost all our clients are organizations rather than a company. More effective usually to hear from somebody from the real world as I call it but we're prepared to assist them to get ready for public hearing. We've even sometimes drafted testimony for them. We also draft bills for clients. We don't have a sponsor for them. Or we'll draft amendments to somebody else's bill in the hope that the committee may adopt our amendment to a given bill. We'll talk with members of their of the committee. And that's where in terms of a lobbyist communicating with legislators. Years of experience most of that communication on any given bill is done with the members of the committee because frankly if if we're not able to get a pretty good result from the committee. We're probably not going to get a good result when the bill gets to the full house in the Senate. The one thing. I really don't like to try to have to do is what's called a floor fight. When we're trying to influence. A large number of all 186 legislators. And as a lobbyist that represents multiple clients. I simply can't do that. But what I can do is to encourage members of an organization. To reach out to their legislators. And that work often starts before public hearing. Let's say we're going before the energy committee. I'd like to know how many of you are in the districts the house or Senate districts of a member of that committee. Or whatever committee. We might appear before. Those kinds of relationships because. I was a legislator before email was invented but I can tell you that. If I got three phone calls on an issue that really got my attention. With email you can easily get 30 emails. And after a while I think sometimes they're. They begin to be counterproductive if they all read the same but. Not only speaking constituent contacts and my view. Are the most effective. Lobbying activity. I hope that helps. Yeah. And Bob, I mean, at least from. I got involved in out of because they threw volunteering for the Sierra club and. I'm pretty sure I was told a while back that. You don't have to know all the ins and outs of. This legislation in order to contact your legislator, even a call just saying. Important issues that you care about and that you hope the legislator will care about. It can be a great step. Absolutely. In fact, I have seen people come before. People come before a legislative committee. They've never done it before. They're all nervous. And committee chairs will go out of their way to say, don't worry about it. We've all been here for the first time once. Just tell us. What your concern is. This is a very different process than watching the DC, believe me. Or even being in Hill and Boston. Legislators are not surrounded by staff members. They don't even have their own offices unless they're. Members of leadership or committee chairs. They're very accessible. They don't get paid a lot of money. And I think most legislators, a large majority of them. Want to do the right thing. And they really care about what the constituents. Concerns are. I answered. The question. I hope to your satisfaction, Patricia, about. Tracking legislation, national versus state. At the seat, we are one national organization. With chapters throughout the country. And we have a pretty sizable and effective national team that is focusing on a lot of bills. And tracking all of them, especially. Especially over the last four years, things that we should be in opposition to. There's a lot of. You know, oil industry funded bills that we're aware of and they pop up in every state. So yeah, we are in coordination with our national teams. As well to make sure we know what's going on. I just scroll down toward the bottom of the legislation's home page. There are a bunch of useful links here. Statutes are the laws that the legislature and acts. You want to. Find the status of a bill. You can go here. Information and hearings and work sessions is here. There's also a whole process we have not talked about. I don't intend too much today, but that's rulemaking. But let me go up here for it. The state constitution is the side of the bedrock legal document for the state. Everything else from the point of view of laws. Flows from, and has to be consistent. Consistent with the constitution. Starting with the statutes enacted by the legislature. But often the legislature will assign to. Some agency of state government authority to write rules. Because. The legislature is always the best place to work out all the. Nitty-gritty details of implementing a law. So the legislature may pass a law that provides the basic framework. Leave it up to an agency. To write some rules. Carrying out all the details. So you could find out about the rulemaking process here. Information of various committees here. I think this is one we. We. Went to earlier. Yes, that's where you can. Yeah, this index of lists we saw earlier. So, I mean, you could spend two or three days just getting to know your way around. The legislature's website. I've had years to do it. And I still sometimes have to hunt. Impact till I find just what I'm looking for. Oh, legislative offices. The legislature has a sizable nonpartisan. Professional staff with various functions. Legislative council. This is the 10 members of leadership. And then. The executive director, that is a nonpartisan position. It's out of the chief administrative officer. That keeps the. Wheels grinding away up there. The office of the reviser of statutes. Officially, this is the office that writes all the laws. No matter what we give them. They're going to have to sign off on it and they. Not from the content point of view, but for format. And the legislative information office is where you can get. Information. And there are some links over on the. The side here. And they also have a phone number where you can call up and say, what's the status of LD section. So. This office, the office of policy and legal analysis is absolutely critical. To the functioning of the legislature. These people, and there's probably a dozen to 15 of them. Again, nonpartisan. They're lawyers, historians. People's of public policy graduate degrees. They are, they basically do research. And analysis of issues and bills for the various. Committees of the legislature, each committee is assigned at least one of these people. And some of the busy committees, two of them. And this is another critical office. The office of fiscal and program review. That's a whole office. Full of people. It's assigned to one committee. And that's well, two committees. And maybe more. They, they. These are the number crunches. I don't mean to use a pejorative term. They're critical. To the functioning and especially the budget writing. And then. And by the way, if you. Assuming someday the state house is open to the public again. The law and reference library on the second floor is a wonderful place. And they have a very good and very efficient reference desk. If you're looking for something. And. And you don't have to physically go there. You can call them or. I think they have a fill in the blank form here. You might want to know. Well, what was the law on. Tax exemptions on solar panels. Before the current law. And they could help you with that. But it's also a sort of a quiet. Sanctum. Where you can go. And there are. Computers there. For the public to use. I go over there. I go to the office. Sometimes and check my email. If I don't want to have to go back to the office. And then finally. The acronym of this is. They. Do. They provide some oversight. A little bit like. Inspectors general. In various federal agencies. Nonpartisan. And they go in and do studies of how well. Certain state programs are operating. And they've. They've done that. They've posted a number of studies over the years. And just a few of them. This one on indigent legal services. They spent a lot of time on that, trying to figure out why. That program wasn't working very well. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway. Maybe taking you down a rabbit hole. You don't care to go today. Any other questions? Bob, I know. I appreciate it. I didn't really know about the library and. I'm, I'm really actually glad personally to spend a little extra time on this website. Cause I. Always breeze through it for something specific. Yeah, I know we're just a little bit over the hour. So. Yeah. I'm just going to go ahead and. I'm going to go ahead and do the pending questions. I think I'm going to. Stop the recording, but I'm happy to stand for just a couple minutes. If people have. Followup questions. I'll also mention that. Similar to earlier questions. Anything big that we. Think we need to act on, you will hear about. If you're on our. You know, You know, You know, If you've donated. You are on that email list. So that I think is, you know, kind of one, one tier of activity. If you're not sure, or you still want to maybe give this a little bit more thought, check out some bills. Get on a committee email list. That's, that's great. That's definitely a primary reason why we tried to do this workshop. So you can all get a little bit more familiar with the process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Email in the chat again. And, um, Our legislative team meets pretty regularly. Yeah. Seeing what I'm seeing now on the screen as my email address. Cell number. Anybody wants. We don't see that. I don't think. Let me. Let me stop and reach. Re-share. But I am going to stop the recording. Oops. Well. I get all bollocks up with these PowerPoint presentations, because if I just even breathe on the keyboard, I did the answers to the next. Slide. You could just put it in the chat. I could do that. Couldn't I. And the last thing I'll say before stop the recording, I will put. Now. Yeah. Oh, there it is. Thank you. I was going to say. If anybody wants to take a deeper dive into any. Part of what we did today. I'm happy to do that. And we also have our next. Workshop. I'm just double-checking. I think it is on. Monday. At 4pm. It's on our homepage of our website on our events calendar. And that will be diving into bills a little bit more. So we got the whole overview tonight. We'll dive in specifically to bills, maybe read through more of the details. You might have a couple. Well, we will have a couple of examples and get you more familiar with how bills are written with what they look like. And the next step of the process. That's a lot of information to throw at you. I'm not sure about that. I've been isolated in my brain cells over the last. 45 years. Don't expect you to all. Totally conversing with it after an hour and a half. And yes. All these will be reported and. We'll at least send it to the list of people who are. I'm not sure. Beyond that, but. I'm not sure who actually paid.