The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Kelcey W. during the 2009-2010 League.
Mission: Observe a Legislative Session and Committee Meeting
When I attended the legislative meeting on February 16th 2010, my expectations were not incredibly high, but I was still excited to see in action what I have participated in before at SSI. I had attended a session before but it had been several years prior, so I was not entirely sure what to expect. What I observed surprised me a lot.
The beginning of the session did not really start with a bang. The Republicans have caucus meetings before the session, so many of them came in late. Members of the House came in passing around a box of apples, eating lunch, talking on their cell phones, and checking emails. This did not stop when the session was supposed to start. Talking and milling around was the gist of their work for a good forty-five minutes. The session was supposed to start at 1:30 P.M., but no bills or business was discussed until almost 2:10 P.M. The law makers worked for about ten minutes and passed two bills, HB 5029 and 5672, in this time. Most of the Representatives did not look engaged in this process or even aware of what they were voting on. Granted, maybe they had been talking about these bills for a while or had already read them in previous sessions. However, sitting in the gallery, I could not even catch the name of the bills or what they were about. The bills were passed with one hundred and four yes votes and one no vote. The only time I saw the entire floor responsive to anything was when one of the representatives introduced a class of visiting schoolchildren from his district.
After this experience, I was very interested to see what a committee meeting would be like. I decided it had the potential to be much the same, but still I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the smaller, more intimate setting was where most of the work was done. Still, I had an idea that most of the interaction would come only from the chairperson and the person presenting the business of the day. The meeting I chose was on April 21, 2010, and was The Committee on Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs. Senator Patricia Birkholz was the chair. Three out of the four members of the committee were present. The first item on their agenda was to discuss a House concurrent resolution about Great Lakes water diversion. Representative Warren spoke for around fifteen minutes about what the bill would do and told of a proposed diversion coming from Waukesha Wisconsin.
The next item on the agenda was a little more out of the ordinary. The Michigan 4-H Youth Conservation Council made a thirty-minute presentation about wind turbines and the affects they had on the environment, people, and homeowners. The council was made up of high school students from around Michigan and each gave a short report on various aspects surrounding wind turbines. Senator Birkholz was very gracious to them, but the other senators seemed disinterested as more time passed. The teens suggested that the senators pass SB 1066 and 1067 to strength Public Act 451.
Overall, the legislative session left me with the impression that more work must go on behind the scenes that the public is not always aware of. While it seemed that the legislators were talking about things unrelated to the business at hand, it is more likely that they had already moved on to the next piece of business, having already discussed the day's work in previous meetings. I still have the impression that committee meetings are where much of the productive work occurs, and most likely if I had attended one without something out-of-the-ordinary (the 4-H youth presentation), I would have observed more being accomplished.
