Jan. 15—Shortly after moving to Santa Fe from Florida in 1974, Jonelle Maison was hired as a bill proofreader for what would be the 1975 legislative session.

She hasn’t missed a session in the half-century since.

She had worked several other jobs — bookkeeper, waitress, bartender — when the Roundhouse opportunity emerged.

“I was ecstatic,” Maison said. “I’m very competitive, and we all knew we were going to have a special session. I wanted to be the one to stay and work for it.”

As she prepared this month for the start of her 50th session, Maison, who has risen through the ranks to bill drafter, said she still feels the thrill of being a part of the legislative process each time she walks out onto a chamber floor in the state Capitol.

“I always found it exciting,” she said.

“You have to be very conscious of words and their meanings and make sure you’ve got the right ones,” Maison said of the work. “It’s one of the things I find fun — finding precisely the right word.”

Maison is one of 17 bill writers who work for the Legislative Council Service, researching and drafting the vast majority of bills, resolutions and other measures lawmakers will consider.

Maison has become part of the architecture of the Roundhouse. She has not only worked as a bill proofer, editor and drafter — a position she reached in 1981 — but also has served short stints as a legislative analyst for both the Administrative Office of the Courts and the House Appropriations and Finance Committee.

Over the decades, she has seen the Legislature through highs and lows and everything in between. She has worked in the Legislative Council Service under several directors, including the late, “legendary” Clay Buchanan — who shaped the agency in his almost three decades of leadership — as well as Paula Tackett and current Director Raúl Burciaga.

Burciaga called Maison “an institution within the legislative institution.”

He wrote in a recent email she has trained countless drafters and staff attorneys in drafting legislation with her “unmatched” knowledge on the history and background of many sections of state law.

Maison has the ability to recall where a provision of law can be found within the 13 hard-copy volumes of New Mexico Statutes Annotated, Burciaga wrote, most often without resorting to an online keyword search.

“She has incredible stamina,” he wrote, “and has rarely taken a day off during session.”

Part of the thrill of drafting legislation is that it offers constant opportunities to learn something new, Maison said.

“You’re not doing the same thing every day. Every day always has the chance of being exciting — it’s not that it always is, but it has the chance,” she said.

Maison considers herself a “generalist.” She has drafted bills pertaining to public school licensing, vehicles, executive branch reorganization, appropriations, higher education funding and many other areas of law.

She finds the process of researching and writing a well-crafted bill fulfilling, she said, whether or not it eventually becomes law — and either way, she will learn something new.

She was born in Hawaii and spent most of her childhood in Georgia. She earned a degree in sociology from Florida Technological University, with a focus on “group behavior” and “deviant behavior,” she said.

“It’s stood me in good stead here,” she joked. “I probably shouldn’t say that.”

After she found a career in the legislative branch of state government, Maison said she never looked back.

“It’s that I am part of it,” Maison said. “When I walk out on that floor, I belong.”

The most exciting day for her in the Legislature came in 1992, when the House of Representatives voted to censure Albuquerque Democrat Ron Olguin.

Olguin was later convicted in state court of soliciting a bribe in exchange for his work to help pass funding for a criminal counseling program.

Staffers were then prohibited from observing proceedings from the gallery, Maison said, but she watched from the press box as then-House Speaker Raymond Sanchez asked the sergeant-at-arms to bring Olguin to the well.

Maison reenacted Sanchez slamming a large gavel three times (“Wham! Wham! Wham!”) before reading the resolution to censure Olguin.

“There were just chills,” she said. “It was the most dramatic moment I’ve seen in 50 years.”

Maison — along with other staffers at the Legislative Council Service — is required by law to remain neutral on legislation. She said she is not neutral, however, about the constitutional powers of the legislative branch.

Burciaga wrote Maison has been “a staunch defender of the legislative institution,” reminding lawmakers, lobbyists, staff and others of the need to “zealously guard the Legislature against encroachment from the other branches of government.”

“It should be noted that she is strongly nonpartisan,” Burciaga added, “but she is biased when it comes to preserving and protecting the legislative branch.”

Maison said she and other bill drafters see themselves as “defenders of the legislative branch” who occasionally must work to prevent lawmakers from shifting the branch’s constitutional powers, even as they are sometimes used as scapegoats in the process.

“Our job is to make [legislators] look good,” she said, “but it’s also to protect the branch.”