By Holly South
After finishing college with a degree in business, and spending much of the next few years doing seasonal work as a fishing guide in Alaska and in Chile, Washington native Brittany Yunker-Carlson knew she wanted a place to call home—but didn’t know where.
She happened to meet a woman in Olympia, Wash., who had built a 14-foot long house, and it inspired her to build her own tiny house. On wheels, so she’d be home wherever she happened to be.
The first hurdle was convincing her parents, who live near Puget Sound, to let her build in their yard (“it was a perfect fit!”). With basic building plans she found online and, with no experience in using tools “beyond eighth grade shop class,” she relied on library books and more experienced friends as she taught herself to build a tiny house. After five months of 50-plus hour work weeks, Yunker-Carlson had a 165-square foot home to call her own. “It was an upgrade from dorm rooms and shared houses,” she said with a laugh. (Tour her Puget Sound bungalow here.)
Although her home was on wheels, she decided to stay put and began what she calls her “first real job” as a committee services staffer for the Washington Senate. She’d worked for the Legislature as a page in middle school, and those connections helped her land the committee role.
While there, she helped implement a new electronic committee testimony sign-in program. Carbon-copy paper testimony sign-in sheets were replaced by digital sign-ins via smartphone or kiosks installed on statehouse grounds. The pilot program was a success and eventually adopted by most committees in both chambers.
Yunker-Carlson has now been with the Senate for nine legislative sessions, moving this past year to the Senate Workroom. She works on the daily calendars and staffs the rostrum during session, recording bill status updates and taking notes for the journal.
“I like to say that I work in ‘mission control’ at the Senate. My job is not to go to the moon, but to get others there (and back) while looking good on camera and with no major incidents. I support the process, the ‘mission’,” even if that means working into the wee hours or skiing three miles into work (which she did during the “Snowpocalypse” of 2012, and made the national news) “just to ensure things are ready behind the curtain by the time of convening the next day.”
A recent highlight has been working alongside Lieutenant Governor Cyrus Habib (D). Habib, who is the first blind lieutenant governor in the U.S., presides over the Senate “mostly unscripted,” according to Yunker Carlson. “He runs through motions so quickly, it is difficult to write my notes … to keep up! He has presided fairly, giving equal time to both sides and managing debate turn by turn across the aisle.”
Yunker Carlson’s seat at the rostrum puts her “right where the action is” and she appreciates the nature of her work, which is “to facilitate the process.” She also like the cyclical nature of legislative work—“It’s not the same thing every day. It’s always going to be changing” – which makes it a good fit with her other career: After two years in her tiny house she decided to move in with her now-husband and rent out the “Bayside Bungalow.” Managing the bookings, bookkeeping and maintenance keeps her busy in the summer rental season, when the Legislature is out of session.
When asked if she had any advice for her peers, she replied, “Listen to each other. I have a nonpartisan role, so I cannot take sides on issues. I love sitting at the rostrum during floor debate and hearing both sides of an issue. I usually hear valid, logical and reasonable reasons for a bill, at the same time that others have very good reasons against the bill. Especially in the era of smartphones, Facebook, web history and cookies, our devices learn our browsing history and continually show us [what] … we like to view, so we’re rarely exposed to different perspectives. Now, more than ever, we need to work hard to hear from those with varying viewpoints and work together to find consensus.”
Holly South is a Policy Associate in NCSL's Legislative Staff Services Program. It provides strategic, programmatic and administrative support to the staff professional organizations of NCSL and develops training and information programs for the nation's more than 30,000 legislative staff. She also staffs the American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries.
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