Senate Floor. Eight A.M. Senators scattered at desks. Rain falling lightly outside. The place echoes in ways the House chambers did not. There it all feels close and muffled.
It is a session of stops and starts. The little white numbers that outline the Senate and House calendars, sit mostly in their boxes. The boards are mostly blank as our beloved, red vested Senate pages leave and a new crop begins work today.
The House Chair of the Joint Finance Committee, Maxine Bell, shared her shopping habits with us last week at a dead moment, while the committee waited for JoAn Wood to come make a presentation on transportation issues. Maxine explained that she buys everything at home in her own local grocery store and hauls it here to Boise to the place she stays. It is her own local contribution to her local economy and a way she visits with constituents. Most important, she shared that she knows when the session should be done by the amount of toilet paper she has left. She says that we all had better get to work or she knows she is going to run out.