Session seen by rookie, veteran (5/7/05)

The long hours and pressure of his first session as a state legislator are over.

But for State Rep. Bill Davis (R-Portland), a Portland businessman who earned the District 33 seat in a hard-fought battle last year, the hard work of a nearly four-month session was rewarding and, in ways, surprising.

For veteran State Sen. Allen Paul (R-Richmond) this was another unique session in a career that has now spanned nearly 20 years.

Davis, a long-time community activist in his first elected office, said the legislative session, which wrapped up at the end of last week, was satisfying on several levels.

“It actually becomes more of a family-type atmosphere that what you realize. There’s people on both sides of the aisle (Republican and Democrat) that you become acquainted with, you strike up a relationship with. There’s still partisan politics ... on the floor. But off the floor it’s like most organizations. People strike up relationships with different people and become fairly close-knit,” Davis said in an interview earlier this week.

One of the best friendships Davis developed was with fellow freshman State. Rep. Troy Woodruff (R-Vincennes). It was Woodruff who changed his vote on daylight saving time — narrowly allowing the proposal to pass.

“You find out real quickly that if you’re going to serve your constituents and you’re going to get things accomplished for your district, you’re going to have to be able to work with people on both sides of the aisle,” Davis said.

The grind of a legislative session, which consisted of four-day work weeks in Indianapolis from January through the end of April, is nothing new for Paul, a Republican from Richmond. In his 19th year representing all or portions of Jay County, Paul said that being a part-time legislator has evolved into a full-time job.

“It’s part time in name only,” said Paul in a quick interview at the Indiana Statehouse last week hours before casting a vote against switching Indiana to daylight saving time. “It really is full time. You’re always on call. It never goes away. You’re on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. People are mad right now ... you have people vent on you.”

Even when out of session, Paul said there are consistent demands on his time.

Paul, who will face a primary challenge in 2006 from a fellow Republican, plans to serve one more four-year term if his bid for re-election is successful.

Davis, who faced a relatively low amount of pressure because he backed much of the agenda of state GOP leaders and the new administration of Gov. Mitch Daniels, will also be running for re-election next year.

Former State Rep. Ron Liggett, a Democrat and rural Redkey resident who was defeated by Davis last year, recently announced that he plans to try to reclaim the seat in 2006.

Davis, whose views were largely in step with the GOP agenda, said that during the session “I was surprised with how little pressure I felt from those (lobbyists) in the hallway. The fact of the matter was, I found most of those folks to be very helpful,” he said.

Davis said that although he didn’t feel it directly, immense pressure was brought to bear on some of his fellow GOP legislators who may have been tempted to stray from the party line.

“With a 52-48 (Republican) margin, which is not much, in order to pass the ... governor’s agenda, it took sometimes some lobbying from our own side to our own legislators to get that agenda moved forward,” he said.

The lobbying effort was most intense, he said, on the daylight saving time issue — something Davis said he supported from the beginning in what he called an economic development issue.

The other source of input on issues and legislation both pending and proposed is from the public. And Davis said that the technology boom — including the Internet and e-mail — has allowed constituents to share their feelings at the click of a mouse.

“I think e-mail has completely changed the look of lobbying for local folks. Before, it was you either had to pick up a phone and call someone and you maybe couldn’t catch them, or you had to sit down and write on paper. Now, with the Internet, I can tell you that we literally get hundreds of e-mails a day,” Davis said.

Davis said one of his biggest individual accomplishments during the session was the passage of Senate Bill 378, which provides tax credits and incentives for the construction of coal/gassification, ethanol and biodiesel plants.

The bill, which was co-authored with Woodruff, is “a win-win-win situation. It helps the environment. It helps our dependency on foreign oil. And it provides a market for corn and soybeans,” Davis said. “It’s just an idea whose time as come.”

The legislature, like any job, has its own unique pace and rhythm. In the case of the Indiana House and Senate, that rhythm doesn’t begin until 9:30 or 10 a.m. each day.

And those days, which can stretch into the early or even late evening during crucial times, are spent in session, in party-only meetings (caucuses), reading proposed legislation and meeting with constituents or others who want to express their opinions on pending bills.

On April 27, as the session wound down, Paul spent most of the morning in meetings devoted at least partly to the daylight saving time issue, which would be passed by the Senate that evening. After a quick lunch, it was off to a Senate Rules Committee meeting in a small room in the basement of the Indiana Statehouse, then a quick interview before heading to the Senate floor.

Davis was on the House floor by mid-morning, posing for photographs with several groups and sponsoring a resolution honoring the Ball State University debate team, which recently won a national championship.

Davis was also scheduled to greet a group of students from Jay County High School, but a late morning caucus called by GOP leaders thwarted those plans. The House was called back into session in the afternoon to continue work on a budget proposal that was passed the next day.

Both local legislators agree that helping people is among the most rewarding aspects of the job.

“If you’re not able to like people, you won’t be in the job very long,” said Paul. “Those are the things, the gratification of helping people. My idols were Robert and John Kennedy, and here I am a conservative Republican,” Paul said with a grin in his office that has a window looking down over the floor of the Indiana Senate.

“There are people with all kinds of problems that deal with bureaucracy ... If you know who the people are and how to get around the bureaucracy, I find that rewarding,” said Davis.

Both Paul and Davis, who own and operate and their own companies, said they are working their way back into their “normal” work routine.

Paul spent much of this past week doing interviews in the wake of the end of the session, but said he “has to get back to work next week.

“It’s very much like going away to college,” Paul said of the legislature. “There’s this flurry of activity ... and all of a sudden everybody leaves and goes home.”

Davis said that the employees of his company, LPI Paving and Excavating, have also been under pressure in his absence.

“They’ve done a yeoman’s job of doing that, but I need to get back into the rhythm of just the daily routine of running a business,” he said.[[In-content Ad]]