When my mother was young and learning to drive, her father first taught her all the parts of a car, how they went together and how to fix things if they came apart. Granted, he was a bit of an outlier in this area. In his early 20s, the man actually got together with a few friends and built his own car, and then went on to build, and fly, his own airplane. Date No. 1 with my grandmother was in that plane.

It always struck me as wisdom: If you are going to entrust your life to a system, know how it works.

Cars today are closed systems the average person is never allowed to crack. Few people even change their own oil anymore, let alone get in there and monkey around. I find that sad. More worrisome, however, is that our government is going the same way.

Fortunately, here in Maine, we retain a citizen legislature. You are more than likely to run into your senator at the grocery store than not, and our government is not a closed system. You can get in there, have a say, be involved. As our own Gov. Janet Mills so recently said in her State of the State address, “We are not Washington. We are Maine.”

But, as with all systems you entrust with your life, it helps to know how it works.

Nothing really beats a trip to Augusta to see the Legislature in action, but if you want to start from the comfort of your home, good ol’ Wikipedia has a decent overview about how our state system functions. You can even follow the link to our actual state constitution. Once you have the basics down, pay a visit to legislature.maine.gov.

On this one site, you will find pretty much all the info you need. Along the top you’ll find drop downs for the Senate and the House, giving you a face and particulars for the folks in the seats. You can see who is in leadership positions, too  – heck, you can even watch live streaming sessions of both. You can click on a calendar, which takes you to all sorts of information, or committee links. Perhaps most important of all, however, is the legislation tracker feature.

Using this nifty little search engine, you can see exactly what issues are coming up for discussion and vote. If you want to follow a particular bill, you can hone in on it. Or, if you want to see in general what is happening around an issue you care about, you can do that, too. If we want, for example, to carry forward the conversation on plastics, a simple search shows us all the items up for discussion on plastics, ranging from a bill to eliminate single-use carry out bags to a bill to encourage employers to seek out safer options in the workplace. From there you can click links to read the actual bill, follow committee action, read amendments, and see when a given measure is up for public comment, committee work session, or the vote. You can even read any public testimony that was given before the committee. It’s amazing.

Read enough of these things and you can’t help but start to get comfy with the lingo and understand the traffic pattern of how an idea becomes a law.  We ordinary citizens own an important role in this process. This government, at the state and at the federal level belongs to us.

Grab your owner’s manual, pop the hood and let’s get to work.

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