OLYMPIA – The mostly idle Capitol press corps – made so by the mostly idle Legislature – is struggling with a proper label for the legislative period the state finds itself in.

One could use 2SS, but the local lingo is already replete with numbers and letters. Every piece of legislation starts with an S for Senate or H for House, followed by a B for bill, then four digits, and gains more letters and digits with each significant change. So one can see something like 2ESSB6010, which would mean it’s the second engrossed substitute Senate Bill carrying that number.

We could use literary allusions, but would make us seem more pretentious than normal. Sports metaphors are a common fall back, maybe because political scribes envy colleagues who watch people performing full tilt at their physical peak.

Extra innings was suggested but discarded because there are no defined at-bats and no way to keep score for the sides. Stoppage time has a certain ring to it, but assumes a time-keeper somewhere knows when things will end, and there’s no evidence of that. Plus, that’s soccer and relatively few people understand the rules.

Overtime was the most common stand-in for the first special session, which would make the second special session double-overtime. OT conjures up images of sudden death, but the only way we get out of here is with a budget deal passing both chambers, which sounds like victory. And it won’t be sudden.

So perhaps the best way is the simplest. If the first 30 days was a special session, the current one is an extra-special session.

One can only hope it lives up to its name.

---

---