Readers ask us: how do you find out about this stuff? Sometimes we wonder, too...take, for example, our efforts this past month to unearth what happened to all those obnoxious bills in Olympia. Here's the report from the valiant ETS! volunteer who tried to find out:

The task seemed simple enough; contact the State legislature to find out which bills had been sent to Governor Locke at the end of the 1997 legislative session. After several days of attempting to wrangle the information out of "public officials" I found the list of bills that the Governor was considering. Well, some of them.

The first step is to attempt to make contact with an actual person. The state legislature runs a toll-free hotline with very helpful operators. This works wonderfully while the legislature is in session. Once the session is over, however, the legislative offices no longer keep track of their own bills, or what the legislature even did before it adjourned. Gotta go to the Governor.

The next step is to give the Governor's office a call. Ask for the media relations office. Not sure if the Governor has relations with citizens, but there is a special office just for the press. The first time I called, the conversation went something like this:

"I'm calling to request a list of bills that are now on the Governor's desk."

"I'm sorry, but we do not have that information."

"Hmmm. There are many residents of Washington State who would like to know which bills have left the legislature and may be signed into law by the Governor over the next 20 days."

"I am sorry, but we do not have that information. Our web page recounts the bills that the Governor has on his desk for that day."

"I'd like a list of all of the bills that the governor can potentially act upon. Are you saying that you do not have any way of tracking the bills that are now on his desk?"

"That is correct. We do not have that information."

If you in fact get stumped at the Gov's office, you might as well try the web. Everyone else does it. So, either sneak onto the Internet at work, or go to your local Seattle Public Library and use your 90 free internet minutes. To access the governor's web page, use http://www.wa.gov.governor

It turns out that the "media relations specialist" at the Governor's office was right. They do not have a list of the bills that are sitting on the Governor's desk. (They do, however, have such pertinent information as a minute by minute rundown of the Governor's daily schedule, for all you Jody Foster fans.) There is a way to figure it out, however. First, print out a list of the hundreds of bills that the Senate and the House each introduced during the past session. Sift through and flag the bills marked "delegated to the governor." Next, print out the list of bills that Locke has already signed or vetoed. Spend several hours sorting out the bills that appear on list one, but not list two. Specific bills you may be looking for might not be on either list, because they got added during the session as riders on other bills instead of being passed; there's only short, meaningless descriptions of the bills on list two (e.g., "regarding welfare.") And since bills passed became law after 20 days if Locke didn't act on them, we still don't have a clear idea of everything that's now become law. But if you have the bill numbers and simply need to know what the content was, you can get back on the web and track down the text of each of the bills that you located on the Governor's desk. Of course, one has to decipher the secret codes attached to each version in order to locate the final version of a bill. And then one faces the nearly impossible task of understanding the doublespeak in each bill. Good luck.

Seems that being an informed citizen in this democracy takes lots of time, extensive resources, and way too much education (preferrably a law degree). Very few of us do. Every day, I thank my lucky stars that dedicated volunteers at Eat the State! took the time to track all of this legislation, speak with officials and advocacy groups, and clarify many of the ridiculous bills introduced this session. But: why can't any of us get this information for ourselves?!?!?!?