More help fpr the unorganized.

Lynn, Susan

Dear Editor:

The "Paper Overload" article in your January issue is much appreciated.

As a freshman legislator two years ago, I quickly became overwhelmed by the phone calls, correspondence, bits of paper, news articles, pamphlets and position papers from constituents, interest groups, colleagues, lobbyists and the press. So I developed a system to deal with it.

All of these items had one thing in common. They were comments and information on bills currently filed in our legislature.

I came up with a "Bill Comments Book" to contain all of these bits of paper.

The front section has an index listing each bill number that is filed (we had around 3,800 last year.) The back section has dividers representing bill numbers listed by hundreds (bills 1-99, 100-199, 200-299, etc.)

When I receive a comment on a bill, it is filed in this binder. The bill number is highlighted in the front index indicating there has been a comment received and then the comment or information is filed numerically in the back. Even visitors to my office or phone callers comments are entered into the book by use of a form and filed by bill number.

This system makes it easy to skim through the comments prior to committee and floor session looking for vital information or who is interested in the debate. I can even bring the book home over the weekend and call interested parties for clarification or elaboration.

So far it has been an excellent system and I have even received positive comments of surprise from constituents amazed that I would call them about their opinion on a bill.

One humorous side note: As I described, even comments from visitors to my office are entered in the book. You should have seen the look on the lobbyists faces before they got used to my system. They were pretty surprised that I wrote down their information, position and recorded comments and answers to my questions--some of them even to the point of stuttering. We have all adjusted. I am a little more discrete about my note taking and they have come to expect me to be thorough. Many have actually been impressed that I appear to care so much about their message.

Susan Lynn

Representative

Tennessee