AUGUSTA — It sounds bad: After having enacted a single bill since convening six weeks ago, most of the Legislature is in recess through next week.

The one enacted bill, LD 138, was probably the most urgent of the session because it affected Mainers’ 2014 tax filings and tax filing season is under way. It passed through the House and Senate on Thursday with minimal debate and was signed into law later in the day by Gov. Paul LePage.

Is the passage of only one bill since Jan. 3 any indication of the effectiveness of this Legislature?

Not really. Unlike many of its predecessors, the 127th Legislature did not arrive to find budget holes requiring immediate repair. Other urgent matters did not emerge, leaving lawmakers to scout the opposition and build alliances in preparation for the key political battles that will come this spring.

There were a lot of new members to orient.

There are 15 new members in the 35-person Maine Senate and 66 new members in the House of Representatives, where 151 elected officials serve. All of those fledgling lawmakers, as well as some of the veterans, have been drinking from a proverbial firehose in their efforts to understand the legislative process. Then comes the even more daunting task of learning the ins and outs of state government, voting protocol and myriad policy points.

Lawmakers submitted 1,514 bills.

It is the job of the Legislature to make laws and everyone elected to the Legislature wants to make a difference. The deadline to submit bills was in December and the members of the 127th Legislature tucked 1,514 bill titles under the door before their time to submit nonemergency legislation proposals expired. In addition to those requests, state government agencies submitted several dozen more proposals. On top of that, Gov. Paul LePage, who has no deadline to submit bills, will undoubtedly submit a few dozen, if not more.

All of those bills have to be written.

If you’ve ever studied a legislative bill, you know it’s not easy reading. It isn’t easy writing, either. The Legislature’s Revisor of Statutes kicked into high gear by the end of December and will be churning out bills for months. As of Friday, the office had released draft language for about one-third of the bills requested. Obviously, the Legislature can’t act on bills until they exist.

There’s a drawn-out committee process.

For the most part, every bill goes to its committee of jurisdiction at least twice, once for a public hearing and then again for at least one work session. There are rules about how far in advance committee clerks must announce a public hearing.

Many bills come to committees as concept drafts which require weeks or months of negotiations among lobbyists, lawmakers and the public about the final disposition. Sometimes bills are held up in the process because more than one lawmaker has a similar idea and bills need to be combined or killed.

The House and Senate are in a waiting game.

Votes and debates on the floor of the House and Senate don’t happen until after the committee process. Until then, most of the activity in each chamber surrounds referring bills to committees. The House clerk’s office keeps data on the progress of lawmakers at various points in the session. The first milestone, 500 bills referred to committees, is typically met by mid-February. It took until Feb. 12, Feb. 14 and Feb. 19 in the first year of each of the past three Legislatures. As of Friday, the 127th Legislature had referred 447 bills, which indicates that this Legislature is moving a little more slowly in this regard than any since at least 1993.

The heavy lifting is about to begin.

Committees are beginning to vote on bills and send recommendations to the House and Senate, but the real elephants in the room are the budget bills. The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee has spent most of the past six weeks meeting with officials from state agencies so they can understand LePage’s mammoth $6.57 billion biennial budget proposal, as well as 20 supplemental budget bills that deal with shortfalls and windfalls in the current fiscal year.

Next week, lobbyists, advocates and others with opinions on how the state should spend its money get their turn to sound off when the Appropriations Committee opens public hearings on Tuesday. Absorbing public sentiment on the budget could take a month or more.

Crazy days are coming.

By the end of February, most people at the State House will have a hard time finding a moment to breathe. Lawmakers will be running from one committee to the next to introduce their bills, testify on some that they’ve co-sponsored, all while trying to maintain a presence on their own committee.

Are lawmakers making enough progress early in the session? We’ll know in April or May when legislative leaders look at what’s left to do and either keep a steady pace or begin holding two or more sessions a day to meet the statutory adjournment date of June 17.