Rotunda buzzes with activity ahead of legislative session

More than 600 seasonal employees and dozens of year-round staff keep the show running smoothly so lawmakers can concentrate on the work at hand. With 20 newly minted representatives and new leadership in both the House and the Senate, it's been a little crazier than usual getting ready.

On Thursday, staffers double-checked all the desks on the House and Senate floors, making sure they were ready for lawmakers. Thousands of pages of pre-filed bills were copied and made ready for legislators and lobbyists. On Friday, new secretaries for House representatives were learning the computer system to help their assigned legislators.

Saturday marked the beginning of the session's long haul for Senate Chief Clerk Lenore Naranjo and longtime House Chief Clerk Stephen Arias.

Naranjo still hadn't eaten her sandwich at 2 p.m. Thursday before the session. No time for lunch. "I liken this to a roller coaster," said Naranjo, who was deputy clerk for years under the late Margaret Larragoite.

During the session, there will be many nights she doesn't return to her home in Espa?ola until 2 a.m. She'll be back at the Legislature well before 8 a.m. "Luckily, I don't need a lot of sleep," Naranjo said.

Arias keeps an extra razor, toothbrush and clean shirts at his office in Room 100. He'll spend a few nights sleeping on the brown couch in his office, especially toward the end of the session, as lawmakers begin pulling all-nighters to get bills passed. Arias expects to be at the Roundhouse for 80 days straight, no days off. "I eat, sleep and drink the Legislature beginning in October," Arias said.

The chief clerks are like the Legislature's stage managers. They're in charge of hiring seasonal staff, tracking legislation, keeping communication between the House and Senate flowing smoothly and issuing checks, including to lawmakers. Each is elected by their respective houses. Arias answers to the House speaker while Naranjo gets direction from the Senate Committee.

Naranjo and Arias both worked up through the ranks to their chief clerk jobs. Naranjo was a stay-at-home mom in 1976 when a lawmaker asked her to work for him. The initial 30-day assignment turned into a career. "I've probably worked almost every position here, mostly with the Senate -- attendant, a regular secretary, a committee secretary, a floater," she said.

Arias started in 1966 as a clerk reading legislation for the House when the Legislature was still housed in the Bataan Memorial Building. Over the years, he worked as a payroll officer and even a coat checker, before becoming chief clerk in 1983. Back then, the chief clerk positions were part-time. The positions weren't made full time until 1993.

Arias and Naranjo have a slew of staff to hire and train before the session starts -- secretaries for lawmakers, computer technicians, clerks to read the bills out loud into the record, security officers, committee room attendants and more. Arias hires about 270 seasonal staff, Naranjo about 200.

Those don't include seasonal staff hired by the Legislative Council Service and the Legislative Finance Committee.

Through the year, the chief clerks and their staff work with interim committees and help lawmakers address issues raised by constituents.    "Any person in New Mexico that goes to a legislator and complains, whether it's about a washed-out road, a leaking roof at the senior center, we check into it," Arias said. "We have a constituent liaison we can call at every state agency."

In October, computer staff set up new equipment. A third of the computers are replaced every four years.

On Dec. 1, everything in the Roundhouse is inventoried, from furniture to paintings. "To make sure nothing has been pilfered during the interim," Arias said.

Seasonal secretaries start coming in the first week of January. The House hires one secretary for every two representatives, except for committee chairs who get their own. In the Senate, each lawmaker has a secretary.

The chief clerks have to make sure every lawmaker has an office and that the nameplates over the doors are correctly labeled. Naranjo still had four senators without assigned office space Friday.

The chief clerks have to put together a budget by the weekend prior to the session's opening day. The House budget alone is $3.5 million, Arias said. Just the printing needed for the House through the session will run about $400,000.

More than 1,000 bills are likely to be filed in the House and several hundred in the Senate for lawmakers to wrangle over this session. Each of those may be amended several times and must then be recopied and distributed. The chief clerks are in charge of tracking those bills and knowing the status of every single one at a moment's notice.

On opening day, as every day of the session, the chief clerks will call the roll. Then everyone gets down to the business at hand -- crafting the laws that guide New Mexico's future.

Robert Padilla made his way across the polished floor of the Roundhouse Rotunda last week, his arms loaded down with two cases of Clorox wipes. Padilla, acting supervisor for building maintenance services, joked that his crew is in charge of the most important paper at the Legislature. "The toilet paper," he said with a grin.

About 300 rolls of toilet paper and 15 cases of paper towels were stocked and ready to go by Monday. Padilla estimates those supplies will last about two weeks.

Indoor maintenance crews empty the trash cans, clean the floors, mop up spills and disinfect the restrooms. Often they're the ones who find ill or exhausted adults passed out in the restrooms and call for help. They care for all four floors of the Roundhouse, plus the annex, a total of 25 bathrooms alone to clean. The year-round maintenance crew swells with seasonal help during the session to keep up with the work.

Landscape crews are responsible for clearing the walkways of ice in the winter and caring for the hundreds of trees, flowers and lawns around the 6.5-acre Capitol grounds.

Terry Ebell, a Roy rancher who has managed the Legislature's food service for 16 years, was in the downstairs cafeteria space wrestling a big rack of bread in a tiny space. "You have to love to cook to do this job," Ebell said.

Ebell manages two eateries at the Legislature. Both are open only during the session. In between sessions, all the cookware and utensils are stored away. A ground-level cafeteria is open to the public and staff from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the session. The first level lounge is open only to legislators and their families when the session begins. The cafeterias serve hamburgers, red and green chile, homemade soups and specials each week.

Ebell can only order some food ahead of time. She and her 13-member staff have little storage or refrigerator space. Almost every day she orders 15 pounds of beans and 40 pounds of hamburger ("20 for red and 20 for green chile," she said). She orders countless cartons of eggs, packages of bacon and tons of vegetables.