Topeka ? When the Legislature concludes its business each day, a small army of state employees shifts into overdrive.

“When they go out, we go in,” said Joe Ortega, who supervises a squad of janitors in the Capitol.

It’s not just janitors. There are clerks, secretaries, doormen, researchers, revisors and a number of other employees. It takes a lot of staff to support 165 lawmakers and the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor.

Many of these behind-the-scenes Statehouse employees know what it’s like to work through a sunrise, sunset and another sunrise when the legislative session is in its final days.

“I’ve met my husband coming out for the paper at a quarter to six in the morning,” said Janet Jones, chief clerk of the House.

Alan Conroy, director of the Legislative Research Department, described the end of the session as “stay all night, come home, shower, come back. That kind of stuff.”

If there’s one commodity lawmakers produce during their deliberations, it is a lot of ideas. And most of these ideas have to be put on a lot of paper, even though much of that paper ends up in a lot of trash cans.

For instance, Jones, who has been working in the House for 30 years, and her staff put together each day the journal — the official record of that day’s House action — and prepare the calendar for the next day. They chase down all amendments and transmit all the documents to the state printing plant, which also must have a hard copy of all documents.

“Everybody has their own piece of the action,” Jones said. “Everybody has to take their little path to put it all together.”

Meanwhile, the Senate clerks are doing the same tasks on the other side of the third floor of the Capitol.

The state printing plant, less than two miles from the Capitol, operates round-the-clock, getting all the legislative files prepared for the next day.

“We stay as long as we need to, to get the job completed,” said Verla Vines, manager of the print shop.

“It can get pretty daunting. We have as many as 200 (printing) plates a night, and each plate contains 16 pages of copy,” said Skip Anderson, deputy director of the division of printing.

Back at the Capitol as lawmakers are heading out for the evening, janitors are dumping trash, mopping floors and cleaning up for the next day.

Kansas Statehouse at night

Stanley Stanley Jr. said on some nights he has collected three large Dumpster loads of trash just from the third floor.

“We stay and clean until the next day,” he said. “Once, I found a dead bat in the library.”

But Capitol veterans said that while the hours were long, the work was always interesting.

“There is always something new, or somebody comes up with a new question,” Jones said. “Every year has different issues and different personalities.”