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Erik: What was your most important take away working as a Texas state lobbyist focused
on energy efficiency?
Audrey: Texas' legislative session is only from January through May every other year
and they may have special sessions to address specific issues but really for a state this
size it's rare that you would have as compact a legislative session as what we have we have
and just working near it for one of those sessions was a very eye opening experience
about how fast things move, literally thousands upon thousands of bills get filled and the
ways that different organizations and different individuals and different legislators can
influence and shape that bill going through or not and the ways that it can get hung up
or stopped or blocked or killed, only a very small percentage of bills actually go through
and get passed and it was a very interesting experience to watch the way that -- how important
it is to get all of the stake holders and affected parties together to get as much consensus
on language in a bill before it starts moving through and then likewise to get plenty of
legislators who are understanding the issue, understanding why the bill makes sense and
knowing that there's consensus on it in order to allow it to move through.
Erik: And urgency is such an important looming factor.
Audrey: It's amazing how fast things need to move and how many steps there are to get
through before the end, so it's -- the system is fundamentally set up to where it needs
to be something that everyone can get behind otherwise it's going to have a tough time
going all the way through all the steps by the end of the session.