Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hello, Oregonians, and welcome to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. If you've ever wanted to get to know your politicians personally or understand what it is they are actually doing, then you're in the right place. I'm your podcast host, Jessica Campbell.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I'm your state representative for House District 24, Lucetta Elmer.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: This podcast is a place for you to get to know Representative Elmer both personally and professionally.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: We want Oregonians to feel connected with and educated state politics. So we're so glad you've joined us on a fresh new podcast, adventure, as we cover all things about life and legislation.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Hey, Oregonians, and welcome back to Life and Legislation with Lucetta. Normally, I'm sitting here with just Lucetta. We did have a special guest recently, your little grandson Tatum. And we have another special guest today, an adult this time.
We're so glad you're here. We have another Jessica here because as we've learned, you need to be named Jessica to be part of Lucetta's team. You have a lot of Jessica' your team.
But welcome, Jessica. You are Lucetta's chief of staff. And we're going to dive into all of that as well. But let me just start with welcoming both of you to this episode and asking how things are going for you this week, Lucetta. And maybe we can go through how you even met Jessica in the first place and then get a sense of what you're doing and how you guys are working together and some fun facts about a state representative and a chief of staff and what the roles are and how they work together.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Well, good morning.
I have had a great week. I. I spent a long weekend over in central Oregon in Bend and sun river, and it was beautiful. And I always am just so amazed at the beauty of this state. There are a lot of states that are beautiful, but Oregon in the Pacific Northwest has to be up there in the top for all of the diverse geographical areas that we have and how pretty it is. Just driving over the past to get to Bend. And then we floated a river. We did a hike.
And when I say we, I didn't really do the hike, but I watched Grandbabies. I did float the river and I saw where they hiked. So it's just so beautiful. And I had a great time. And really I'm feeling finally more relaxed as I've. I'm now about a month out of long session. Feel like the old me is coming back. So that is great.
To your second part. How did I meet Jessica?
Jessica and I met when I first was elected into the legislature. And she was chief of staff for Representative Tracy Kramer. Tracy was also a freshman. We got elected in 2022 and became work besties. And Jessica was a very well versed chief of staff. She had some depth. My chief of staff was a newbie at the time and wonderful and amazing. Kyle Olson was with me during my first two years and did great.
He was retired as a warden for both state prison and federal prisons. And so he, he was knowledgeable about that portion of how the legislature works with our prison system, and he did great. But he had never been in the building. Neither of us had. So we were both very green. And Jessica was very kind and, and really helped our office out a lot and helped Kyle get up and going. We were just so appreciative.
And fast forward now she's my chief of staff and I didn't steal her from my work bestie. Tracy gave me the blessing. But I, we, not just me, there's several of us that joke. And we say that Jessica is the original Siri. She's the legislative Siri.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: A hundred percent.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: Hey, Jessica.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Sis.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: And she knows her. Yeah, it's great.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Truly. It's like a walking encyclopedia over here. Just phenomenal.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: But you don't get there overnight. And I have asked a lot of those exact same questions, which is the only reason, and I know the answer to that.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Well, we're so glad you're here. And as listeners to this podcast may have remembered from our previous episode that there's also a story Night connection, because we got to hear your full life story on the story Night podcast. And so that was fun that we get to hear all these fun facts about you, including that you literally light fireworks.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: It's been a fun time of year. The best stress relief. After a long session, you use your brain to read bills and answer emails and think critically about all these things. And then you completely switch gears and you go out in the hot sun and you lift heavy things and you wire intricate fireworks and you make sure everything's right and you push that first button or you light off that first firework. This year I got to do all hand light shows. So it was super fun.
And it's the best stress relief. It just the first one goes and all of the worries in the world are gone. Then you clean it all up. That takes a little while.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: I mean, you've heard of people in kind of within counseling or therapy, things going, okay, write down, you know, your problems or whatever, and then, you know, rip them up or put them in a balloon and fly them away or burn them. This is a whole other level.
[00:05:13] Speaker C: Set.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Off a giant firework, like real, like show level fireworks, not like little sparklers in the backyard.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Well, I think after the session we had, you needed to have several fireworks shows to get rid of all of that.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: Thankfully, I got two in a row, both hand lights. So that was really, really helpful.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: This impressive. So aside from lighting fireworks, you have a very intense and non stop job. And this was what was so interesting to me that I didn't realize until I kind of joined the team was that the state representatives are technically part time, but their chief of staffs are full time.
[00:05:54] Speaker C: It's a pretty crazy dynamic.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Our brains think that a certain title means a certain amount of work and a certain pay and then it goes down in a, you know, quote unquote hierarchy from there. And it, this is all kind of upside down and not what you would expect, I suppose. So what does a chief of staff do compared to what a state representative does? I mean, your team and you are a phenomenal team. But I know those things get divided up and probably a lot of people don't even know how that works.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: I'll jump in real quick and just say, you know, I think back in the day we'll say back when government was becoming something that America wanted to implement and establish, it was people volunteering or people serving for a season.
And you fast forward to today and I think that the true core traditionalist still has that notion around all of our elected positions. So all of the legislators. Well, not all. I would say several. Most especially in my caucus, all legislators. We have personal jobs, we have careers and we're taking time out of our professional life and our personal life to serve our state and to serve our districts. So every state is set up differently. And I got to go to a conference last year, it was a state's conference where I got to hear about how vastly different states are and how they serve. I mean, some serve year round and some serve every other year. Some serve much shorter time, Oregon and we've said this before on the podcast, odd number years were about six months and even number years were about six weeks. So we are considered part time. And it's, it's our time to, you know, air quote, give back. And then when session is out, we go back to our businesses. We need that. We need our jobs to be able to provide for our livelihood because our salaries from the legislature are not big and that that doesn't cover what we would need to live.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: I remember that Was a big surprise to me, too. And this is all, as we've said, public information. Anybody can go on to the website and see who makes what everything. As we mentioned last time, they can look at donations, they can look at salaries, they can look at everything. It's all, all public knowledge. But I didn't realize it was different state to state.
Wow. Are any other states operating the same way Oregon does?
[00:08:25] Speaker C: Probably, but not necessarily the pay wise. There are even some states where you don't get paid or like it's $100 a year or.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: There's a very wide variety of ways that it can be handled.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: And is that just for state representatives or also state senators?
[00:08:43] Speaker C: There's a different combination for both. In Oregon, the state senators make, I think $200 more a month than the representatives do. But even the speaker of the House, it's a different number. The Senate president, it's a different number. For the most part, though, there's a pretty uniform standard of the House and the Senate payment.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: What's not a different number is the minority leader.
[00:09:06] Speaker C: True.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Unfortunately, they make the same amount as.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: All the other representatives. Wow. A lot more headache.
[00:09:12] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Because the majority leader, at least they have usually the speaker of the House or the Senate president to lean on as well for some of that workload. Minority leaders out there, all out there with the other chamber's minority leader.
But yeah.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: So as the chief of staff, you are kind of behind the scenes. I mean, you're always there, but you're not, you know, the face on the political poster or the campaign.
But I would imagine that every representative would probably say, like, they just cannot function without their chief of staff. You are critical to this.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: I've heard rumors of a couple who have tried and they didn't last very long before they called uncle and said, okay, I want one.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Tried to do the job without a chief of staff. Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:05] Speaker C: Tried to do it without staff. And this is long before my time, but I heard it didn't last very long.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: I. I believe it. So if you were to just kind of, if somebody said, oh, I want to be a chief of staff, what does the chief of staff do? If you were to give the Cliff Notes version of your job description, what would that be?
[00:10:21] Speaker C: It depends on the day.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: So there might be 365 different lists of duties.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's what's fun about it, is you get to do a little something different every day. And during sessions, sometimes, as Representative Elmer well knows, you come into the Office thinking the day is going to go one way and five minutes in, or maybe by the time you step out of the car in the garage, the day is going a whole different direction. You just roll with it.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, when you got. When you got into this, what was the general job description? Let's put it that way.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: I was lucky enough, so I started out as an intern for the Senate Republic Caucus office. And, you know, interns can do a variety of jobs. Just trying to dip your toe into the water and figure out what you like, what you don't like. I was then lucky enough to be hired as secondary staffer for one of the representatives, and I've been in the House ever since. And that's where I found my love for constituent services and constituent outreach. So if you're having trouble with the dmv, if you're struggling with an unemployment claim, those sorts of things. I can be a liaison or office can be a liaison between the agency and yourself.
So if it's the height of COVID and you're struggling to talk to the employment department, there's hours and hours of time waiting on the phone just trying to figure out what's going on.
Our office would function as a liaison and in a previous role, that is what we did.
That was a wild time for constituent services, for sure. But we still function in that role. We've helped with all sorts of different things.
Wow.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: So in addition to helping constituents with anything, I mean, now my brain's even making a whole list of, like, can you help me with this insurance issue?
Maybe can I put you on this call?
Like, should be really good to have in every meeting. Right.
But are you in charge of, like, scheduling, you know, other duties?
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Yes. So scheduling, responding when constituents email. And even if it's just support or oppose House Bill 1234, I manage the email inbox and I help with, not necessarily the primary role. Usually we have Claire during session, but in interim, when our budgets kind of change a little bit, that changes our staffing levels and I take on more policy.
So next week we have meetings with some constituents who had bill ideas that they wanted put forward this past session, but there were some deadlines that had passed. We weren't able to get them drafted or well vetted in time enough to have them be successful. But we're going to start those conversations, which sounds crazy given that we just ended session, but we're going to start conversations about new policy development with some of our constituents who have ideas, so I'll work through those. So we can hit the ground running in the next session. Keeping up on the committees aren't necessarily going, but the policy development again has already started, so making sure that we're monitoring that. And the agency oversight is another big one. I think we've heard a lot about that with transportation package and in Representative Elmer's committees, specifically the one she's vice chair of House labor and Workplace Standards.
Boli is a really big one. They, the Bureau of Labor and Industries, there's wage claim issues where they have a cap on your salary if you submit a wage claim and you make more than a certain amount of money. They don't have the resources to investigate that, and they'll just tell you that up front. So what are we doing about agency oversight? How are we making sure that they can work through that workload and get to those people?
And that's what we're doing in interim. But the job changes a lot between session and interim. And every day is a little different, but it's a lot of fun.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: Well, and I remember in a previous conversation, I know, Lucida, you had, you'd have like, meetings back to back to back, maybe 15 minutes and then immediately another 15 minutes and another and another and another.
[00:14:26] Speaker B: And.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: And then you had Jessica over here that was kind of managing the whole thing and making sure that the. The day ran smoothly and making sure that you had all the information to shift gears mentally from one topic to another topic with no downtime, like all, all the main points that you would need to know. She was just like you said, your, you know, the encyclopedia, the Siri, the. The Google, like the wealth of knowledge that would make sure you had the key pieces for each thing you were going to.
Right. Yeah. It's hard to imagine. Yeah. Doing things without her.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. It's just the. The workload is too much.
[00:15:02] Speaker C: You.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: I don't know how anyone would do it by themselves.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: That's crazy. It is completely.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: And I, I do have. I mean, my vice chair role. That committee is a very. It's one of our largest, most contentious committees. So it requires a lot of reading and studying and networking with stakeholders and lobby and just really understanding what you're. What fire you're stepping into every day you go into committee. Because it will be a fight.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Well. And nice to have somebody who literally knows about fire and fireworks as you're walking into all these metaphorical fires.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: So part of that, this will be a shorter episode today, but part of what we want to do with this, this podcast is make sure People get to know Lucetta personally and since we have somebody who works with her all the time, like 12 hours a day lately.
In closing, Jessica, is there anything that, you know, surprised you about getting to know Lucetta or just fun facts about who she is or why, why you would recommend her to anybody listening?
[00:16:02] Speaker C: I think there were certain things that I was surprised about and other things that completely reaffirmed everything I had heard about her before. I had the pleasure of hearing all the fun, exciting things from my previous boss, Representative Tracy Kramer, who, like Lucetta mentioned, they were work besties. So I got to hear all the fun things when Representative Kramer would come back to the office frustrated about something and be like, I just need to talk to Lucetta. And so the two of them would get time to connect and things like that.
I do remember when I was transitioning jobs, Representative Kramer mentioned the incredible workload and the things that you take on. And she did mention it's a fast paced environment, but you're going to engage your brain and it's going to be really exciting. And I will say that's completely been reaffirmed. A lot of people can be dissuaded by heavy workload and things like that, but it's exciting to see how much she's putting in. So we mentioned it's a citizens legislature, it's a part time job.
That was not the approach you took to this. You dove in head first and it shows. And other people have noticed that too. Been exciting to work with somebody who puts just as much in as I do, if not more some days. Because you do have the ties to the community. This is your home. These are your people that you're fighting for. And you can see that with the representatives who really believe in their community like she does. It's empowering to work for somebody like that.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Thank you.
Well, I greatly love and appreciate you both. Thank you so much for even carving out, you know, 15 to 20 minutes this morning to talk over this podcast episode. Oregonians, thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you got to know Lucetta a little bit better and got to know Jessica and that you come back next time to learn a little bit more about what's going on in Oregon.
