Monday night was Citizens’ Night at the North Dakota State Legislature. This is an evening of both the Senate and House conducting business during hours where the public can come and get a look at the process. In addition to the evening session in each house, there are also some committee hearings held for a time before the houses convene for their scheduled business.

The capitol building’s Memorial Hall was pretty busy for the night time! Many of the folks working the event tonight had already put in a full day with the normal legislative day, and were working double duty for those of us who attended. Thanks, everybody!

The public was welcome to stop in at the journal rooms and pick up copies of the bills to be discussed in committee and in the sessions.

The House of Representatives. Many of the legislators had their kids or other guests, presumably from their districts, seated with them for the session.

There was plenty of back-and-forth traffic between the chambers, as they met at the same time. People were respectful of the business being conducted, and the staff were gracious with the unusual activity.

The Senate. I have a friend who’s a page for this session, and it was neat to say hi to her. My wife also stopped in to say hi on her way to pick up our little boys, who were playing at a friend’s house while Mommy and Daddy were out and about.

This is a fantastic idea for the North Dakota state government, and I’m glad they did it again this session. I posted about it two years ago during the previous session, and I’ve been looking forward to it ever since.

After the night was wound down, I hung out quietly and patiently until I had the Great Hall of the state capitol to myself. I then ran around with my camera and tripod for a while; this is the only occasion I can think of where a regular citizen can see the inside of this wing of the capitol all lit up at night! I’ll post those pictures soon.