Legislative Research

Today we had some technical difficulties and I couldn't do what I normally work on, so I was researching, which is still just as interesting.  A representative was looking for a bill to help out a certain population and make that group of constituents happy, so I was researching policy things that that group would want changed or improved.  It was pretty hard to find things that aren't already being addressed in the budget / wouldn't cost money to implement.  I finally found an issue that seemed neutral enough to have bipartisan support, and simple enough that its impacts could easily be explained to the constituents who would most benefit from it.  And, as far as I can tell, it wouldn't even have any direct monetary costs for the government.  I found the section of the Ohio Revised Code (fancy name for Ohio's laws) which would be amended, wrote up a little summary of the issue and how this bill would fix it, pitched the idea to Leader Budish to see if he thought it made sense to go forward with it, and tomorrow I'll probably clean up my little summary a bit and it'll go off to the the representative who wanted it in the first place.  The writing and pitching really isn't the hard part, it's the research... It took SUCH a long time to find an issue that would be relatively noncontroversial, wouldn't cost much money(nobody wants to spend even a penny on anything these days in government -- it's just bad politics with all the financial panic everybody has been in since the recession) and would be directly beneficial to a certain group of people. 

In other news, tomorrow is my last day!!  I'm planning on working for my boss from home on a slightly smaller scale throughout the summer (can't remember if I've already told you that?), but besides that I probably won't have much to talk about tomorrow(plus I'll be busy with my final report. Why did they make it due the same day as the last day of project?!)... So this is my last post!  I hope that at the very least you've enjoyed hearing about all our projects, Sra. Botella!  No idea if the rest of you have been reading my posts.... I'm doing my best to at least skim most of yours so hopefully you all found something interesting and not too dry.  Hope it's been fun for everybody!