The Struggles of the Secretary of the Senate

This morning, the Michigan Senate was back in session dealing with a couple of resolutions.  That's typical during the first few days of a legislative session as both chambers are still in the process of organizing their committees and members begin to introduce bills.  Having worked in both the House and Senate for many years, I can tell you that it's a lot of busy work.

 Today, however, I really felt for the Secretary of the Senate and the Lt. Governor however.  Today they had to read (twice) over 17 pages of bills into the record.  You see the Constitution requires that every bill must be read three times before it can be voted on by a chamber.  The House typically only read a bill once before referring it to committee.  The Senate reads the bill twice.  Now, that doesn't seem all that bad, even if you have a large number of bills to read into the record.  However, there's been a back log of bills during this legislative session because the respective chambers didn't meet last week.  Too many people went to Washington DC for the inauguration and the busy work just didn't get done ... until today.

In addition, the past the Secretary of the Senate and the Assistant Secretary of the Senate would take turns read the bills in.  Unfortunately, there is no Assistant Secretary of the Senate at this moment.  Tradition provides that the Secretary of the Senate is nominated from and elected by the majority party in the Senate (the Republicans), and the Assistant Secretary is nominated from and elected by the minority party (the Democrats).  For whatever reason, the Senate Democrats haven't nominated any one that has received the traditional signoff from the Senate Republicans.

As such, Carol Morey Viventi - the Secretary of the Senate - is all by her lonesome and has been for almost a year now.  She has been the only person who reads the bills into the journal.  And this morning, after a well deserve break, she's back at it ... with 17 pages of bills.

My hat goes off to her as the 95th Legislature gets to work this year.  May her voice last for the close to 1300 Senate Bills she will read at least twice and the 1000 or so House Bills that will be sent her way that she will read at least twice.