This is Sunday Night.  Tomorrow morning, early, I leave for McComb to look at a new regional wastewater treatment plant that uses no chemicals.  As chair of the Conservation and Water Resources Committee and subcommittee chair of a similar subcommittee on the Public Health,  I am the defacto OUTHOUSE expert of the House of Representatives, a dubious distinction at best.

If "you-know-what" rolls down hill...it eventually hits my committee.

From McComb, I go to the Gulf Coast again and on Tuesday will meet up with a group of North Mississippi legislators and hopefully allow them to experience the same things I felt on my prior visits to the Coast.  This will be the first of two groups, the second coming the following week.

I'd like to give you an idea of the kinds of people we have working for us at the Capitol.

Tammy Cowart is the committee assistant for the Public Health, Medicaid, and our

Conservation committees.  She does all the paperwork for these committees.  She

keeps up with bills introduced, bills assigned to committees and subcommittees,

changes made to those bills, passage or death of those bills, conference committee

reports, our appointments, our telephone calls, our schedules, our correspondence, our reimbursements (when we get them again), inquiries from the public, AND she does not just do that for the chairmen, but committee members as well.

For this trip, she has written, personally called, made a briefing folder and kept up with members who are going.  She has arranged for people on the Coast (who she did not know) to appear before the members and let us know what they have been through.  She has called mayors, supervisors, charter boat operators and shrimp processors.

I asked her to get me the names and numbers of casino managers on the Coast to see if I could get members a discount on rooms.  Well, she took the initiative and got the rooms comped.  She made reservations for lunch and dinner for the group, secured meeting rooms, and when we get there she will make sure the rooms are set up, copy machines are available, people are reminded of their times to speak, and take care of any unforeseen issues.

She has arranged for the flyover for members and coordinated the side trip to Mobile and a tour of the Incident Command Center.

AND, she does NOT get reimbursed for travel to the Coast, will get no comp time, and will have to settle for a THANK YOU come Thursday when we head home.

There are about nine committee assistants and anyone of them would do exactly what Tammy has done for this trip.  I just thought you might know about the persons who work for state government.