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On Monday, the Senate Ways and Means Committee passed a controversial tax extension for Honolulu’s rail project unanimously – by accident. The committee intends to reverse its decision on Thursday. But Oahu residents will undoubtedly still be scratching their heads.

How does a bill that would raise $300 million per year from taxes to fund a project that’s been a flashpoint in every mayoral election since 2008 pass accidentally? It’s not as outrageous as you might think.

We can likely blame the error on the upcoming crossover deadline on March 9. This critical date on the legislative calendar is the last opportunity for bills to pass out of their original chamber and cross over to the other chamber. 

If a bill doesn’t cross over, it’s dead until next session. Of the 3,132 bills introduced in January, fewer than half will survive.

Our state constitution requires bills to be published at least 48 hours before a final vote. To ensure they meet this requirement (and have breathing room for last-minute changes), the Legislature requires committees to publish all bills and their accompanying reports by Friday.

In the next 36 hours, committees will have their last chance to pass legislation – or reverse their decisions – on the 1,672 bills still alive in their originating chamber.

With this high-stakes deadline looming, legislators are rapidly hearing and passing bills in committee meetings and sessions that can run for hours on end. They acted on nearly 700 bills in seven days. As of Wednesday evening, only 165 of the bills intended to cross over were found online in their final form alongside .

This means that legislative staff agencies still have many hours of work ahead of them drafting bills and reports while committee chairs wait anxiously to sign off on those reports before going home for the night.

Once signed, the clerks’ offices, sergeant-at-arms’ offices and the House printshop will be hurrying to publish the reports online, make copies and deliver printouts to some members’ offices by Saturday morning. I’ve never had these responsibilities, but they look pretty exhausting.

Throughout my legislative career, my crossover roles always began on Saturday mornings.

As a part-time file clerk for the House Minority Research office my entire job consisted of organizing thousands of testimony pages by bill and reuniting them with their bill folder. And, on Saturday, it paid off.

As members of the Republican minority, our representatives wanted their own “digest” of each bill so analysts would review the bill text, highlight key pieces of testimony and draft a synopsis. Passing them a folder full of everything they needed was like handing them gold. 

Once they were finished, a senior member of the staff – the director or an attorney – would review the digest and hand it back to me for printing and re-filing into binders earmarked for each Republican member. It sounds simple, but the whole process could easily take us from Saturday morning to the early hours of Sunday. 

I repeated that experience three times a session for three years as a file clerk, an analyst and the director. In addition to building the skills to read legislative text and write under pressure, I got very good at power naps.

Sidenote: A  died mysteriously in the 2011 session and hasn’t been seen since.

When I was elected as a state representative, I still spent my Saturdays reading committee reports and bills. My role as minority floor leader then minority leader meant I was expected to explain every bill to my caucus members regardless of the topic when we met on Monday for an all-day caucus. On the best days, I had other legislators to study with me. Our snack of choice was a box of Cinnabons. 

Our Monday caucuses were frenzied. As a very small group, Republicans had a lot of time for discussion. I’ll be forever scarred by  that raised a conversation about the role of consent in bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism practices and led to one of my colleagues shouting with exasperation, “But, what does the M stand for?”

Notwithstanding the weird questions, all-day caucuses were a chance to hear each other’s concerns, coordinate our speeches and whip votes.

The Republican caucus took four to six hours that were filled with lively debates, angry eruptions, eye rolls and laughter. The Democratic caucus seemed to finish in half the time. When I switched parties, I understood why.

While Republicans combed through the text looking for traps or trying to divine the politics behind each bill, Democratic chairs were available to directly answer any questions their members had. With an abundance of members, you can almost guarantee that someone will alert you if there’s a problem with a bill. The Republican caucus never had that luxury so our process was painstakingly slow.

All that work culminated in marathon floor sessions on Tuesdays, which sometimes required lunch and dinner breaks. My staff drew pictures in my binders and created legislative bingo to keep me going. Despite their efforts, I always ended the day with bloodshot eyes and makeup sliding down my face, ready to pass out yet too wired to sleep.  

I’m not looking for sympathy. It was a job I campaigned every two years to keep. I just hope that a look behind the scenes can shed light on why mistakes are made. Nearly everyone at the Capitol is underpaid and overworked, putting in long hours because they know the whole state is counting on them.

We could talk about reforms that lengthen the session or further limit the bills introduced to ease the chaos of legislative deadlines. But we could also give legislators and their staff a little bit of grace.

The system might not be perfect, but I believe we can trust it. A bill has a lot of eyes on it before it gets to a final vote, and a rail tax extension won’t accidently become law.