Sheila Mason first entered the Kentucky Capitol to clean it.
She worked part time during college for her father, Andrew “Biddy” Mason, who ran the building’s janitorial services. He knew one of the revenue department directors because he helped him navigate his wheelchair down to his car every night. Biddy Mason asked about a job for Sheila; the director encouraged her to apply.
Not long after, while she was working at the Capitol, she backed into the commissioner of revenue’s office as she vacuumed. When she realized he was still at his desk, she apologized and started to leave but couldn’t resist. “I said, ‘Well, since I’ve disturbed you ... ’ I introduced myself and said I had applied as a tax auditor,” she recalls.
She got the job.
“A lot of my job opportunities have come by chance,” Mason says with a laugh.
She has spent nearly 50 years in the Capitol since then, most of them at the Legislative Research Commission, where she became indispensable. She never expected to stay so long, but the job has an aspect she came to enjoy.
“I’ve found it exciting to keep learning,” Mason says.
Community Roots
She grew up surrounded by a big family in a close-knit Black community near the Capitol in Frankfort. Her grandmother at one point could look out her window and see the seven homes where her children lived. Mason raised her own daughter on the same street where she had played as a child.
The community was her whole world, but eventually, the tumultuous bigger world couldn’t be ignored.
In 1964, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to lead a peaceful march to the Kentucky Capitol to support a state civil rights bill. Baseball great Jackie Robinson and folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary were joining him.
Mason says her school principal told students they’d be suspended if they skipped class to take part. Mason was among many students who rushed to see what they could during a lunch hour; she only got to hear a bit of King’s speech before an audience of 10,000. Then-Gov. Edward Breathitt supported civil rights, and the bill passed during the next legislative session, making Kentucky the first Southern state to pass a civil rights act.
Mason was late getting back to school that day, but she found out she needn’t have worried about being disciplined.
“No one was suspended because we always went to school with the governor’s kids, and the governor’s daughter was at that march and up front and center,” Mason says.
She stayed in Frankfort for college, studying business and economics at the historically Black Kentucky State University. Her heart was with the Civil Rights Movement, but as college drew to a close, she had the practical matter of finding work. And some role in state government seemed obvious.
“Back in the ’70s there weren’t a lot of job opportunities, and it’s a company town,” Mason says. “State government is the company.”
Making Connections
Mason acknowledges she had been so ensconced in Frankfort’s Black community that it gave her pause to work in an agency made up almost entirely of white colleagues; she didn’t know if she would be accepted. She took inspiration from remarks made by Texas Rep. Barbara Jordan, the first Southern Black woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Jordan was asked about the first time she had to go to work with white folks,” Mason says. Jordan described how she made a point to join whenever employees gathered around the coffee pot, “and that’s how she assimilated herself into the environment.”
With that in mind, Mason made a point to reach out to her colleagues, developing strong friendships with them in the decade she worked there.
In 1980, Mason landed a job with the LRC after a tip from an acquaintance. She says she was intimidated at first: The job entailed providing impeccable research for committees and presenting the research to legislators. But she loved the work.
“You would be given a situation or a topic by a legislative body, and they would say, ‘This is what I want to find out,’” Mason says. “What I loved about it was how we had to start thinking very deeply about the situations and not just look superficially (to) make meaningful recommendations.”
Mason says through the years, working on a wide range of complex issues, she always felt lawmakers “respected our professionalism; they would at least listen to us, whether they agreed or not.”
Love of the Institution
John Snyder, the Transportation Committee staff administrator at the LRC, got his start working for Mason right after grad school in 1989. He says he values the “calm presence, a seriousness, a thoughtfulness” that Mason brings to her job and often seeks her advice on how to approach delicate situations with colleagues or lawmakers. Snyder says he can trust her advice because she has a strong love of the institution and what it does, and “an unerring sense of standards.”
Snyder, NCSL’s staff vice chair, credits Mason for encouraging him to get involved with NCSL. Mason had long taken advantage of professional development programs through NCSL, led some training sessions herself and networked with her counterparts in other states at regional conferences and the organization’s annual Legislative Summit. That’s why she knew it would be a good fit for Snyder.
Holly South, NCSL’s associate director of Legislative Staff Services, has worked with Mason over the years.
“She’s incredibly generous with her time and expertise, and is, in my mind, the gold standard for a legislative staffer and a leader in her field,” South says.
After learning the research ropes and helping new staffers get up to speed, Mason took on an additional role putting out the legislative record, the daily paper listing every action on every bill. The person who had been doing it burned out after two sessions.
“So, they asked me if I would do it and I said, ‘Yeah, why not?’” says Mason, who agreed to take on the task for a few years.
That was in 1984. She hasn’t stopped.
“And we jokingly say that’s why they’ve kept me here, because they want someone that’s able to stay late every night,” Mason says with a chuckle. She even managed the grueling schedule after she got married (she timed her wedding to avoid the legislative session) and had a daughter (who conveniently arrived right after a session).
Time for Others
As if her job wasn’t busy enough, Mason has also found time to volunteer for the community.
She got involved with the Kentucky Historical Society, recording oral histories with elders in Frankfort’s Black community and eventually serving on the board. The group decided to ask people to share family photos that would show the neighborhoods and events in the community over the years. They got such an outpouring that Mason suggested they create a book. She became one of the editors of “Our Community: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Kentucky.”
Since 1999, Mason has overseen the LRC internships offered every other year during budget sessions. She’s shepherded 240 students through the program; 16 have returned to work for the LRC and eight still work at the Capitol.
Ashton Montgomery, a political science and Spanish major at Asbury University, just finished her internship on the education committee says Mason’s support was key.
“We could tell even just from the earliest interactions how much she wanted to invest in us, and not just within our internship, but also personally, professionally, academically—just kind of in every sphere,” Montgomery says. “She was so kind and attentive.”
Montgomery says she and other interns could often be found in Mason’s office, seeking advice, career suggestions or just catching up. David Givens, the Senate’s president pro tempore, says Mason is the perfect person to handle the intern program.
“It requires compassion and empathy, but also she has to be a bit of a disciplinarian,” Givens says. He adds, “She’s super talented but very humble.”
At 75, Mason has certainly considered retiring. Especially on those late nights when “I’m feeling every year, I’m feeling all of it,” she says.
Givens says no one wants to admit Mason will actually leave some day.
“We are going to use our legislative authority to deny her the opportunity to retire,” he says with a laugh.
Her colleagues agree she’ll leave impossible shoes to fill. “They’ll have to split the job up among three or four different people,” says Snyder, who has heard Mason speculate about retirement enough that he doesn’t take it seriously.
“The day Sheila Mason walks out of here with a box of her personal belongings is the day I will believe that Sheila Mason has retired,” Snyder says.
He’s actually a factor in her decision. In Louisville, he’ll become NCSL’s staff chair and will complete his term at the 2025 Legislative Summit in Boston. That event commemorates the organization’s 50th anniversary, and Mason says she’d like to be there to acknowledge her protégé and to celebrate all that she’s gained from NCSL over her career.
Mason feels grateful for the meaningful work she has been able to perform in her years at the LRC, and that’s what makes it hard to leave.
“This is not a glamorous job,” Mason says. “What has made it fulfilling is that there is a certain part of connecting with humanity in working for the Legislature. I don’t want to overdo what I do, but in a very small way, you’re part of a group that touches every aspect of people’s lives.”
Kelley Griffin is a senior editor in NCSL’s Communications Division.