Many of you have asked, “What is the timeline for the legislative process?” Since I have been meaning to do this for awhile I will address this complex topic. Keep in mind each legislative session is different and if you live in another state you might have other variances.

End of Session

• End of Session-Begin working on next year’s proposed legislation with your legislatures.
• Be working with your issue base throughout the year.
• Participate in any Town Halls, Meetings, and events with your legislator’s.

Three Months before Session

• Three months before session meet with your legislator(s) and refine your strategy and language.

Two Months before Session

• Two months before session legislative staff will compose the language.

One Month before Session

• One month before session approve the proposed language of your legislation.

First Day of Session

• First day (can be week) is the honeymoon phase of session, everyone is happy to see one another and your Capitol is the place to be for visibility, especially the first day of Session.
• For optimal visibility and success, have at least one person stay at your Capitol for the duration. Things are very fluid during session and if you do not have a paid lobbyist to preserve your interests (which doesn’t always work either) it is best to have a person with a laptop and a cell phone for instant communication with your issue base.
• Follow the guidelines in the Etiquette 101.
• Day one, schedule appointments with key legislators. Their calendar fills up fast.
• Keep you proposed language quiet so that you don’t encounter the ‘sneak attack’.

Your proposed legislation schedule

• Once your bill is ‘dropped’ or goes into the ‘hopper’ it is safe to share your proposed language. This means your primary bill sponsor has collected enough co-sponsor signatures and support to believe your bill will be a go.
• Your bill will be read.
• Network with legislators and educate them on the issue. You typically have 15 minutes. Put your presentation in a presentation folder for professionalism and organization. Have a legislative handout envelope all ready to present to any interested legislators.
• Work with the media.

Preparing for your Hearing

• Line up anyone you need to testify at the next hurdle, the Committee Hearing.
• Write up your testimony or memorandum, FOR THE RECORD. This is to preserve your testimony when it is watered down into minutes (courtesy of Bruno). You can write a letter, a more casual testimony or a formal Memorandum.
• Coach all parties who will testify that this is: FOR THE RECORD, state their name, organization or issue.
• Aggressively seek a Committee Hearing
• Once you have a date for a Committee Hearing, know it can, and often will change.
• You are entering the winnowing process.
• There is a calendar for critical dates that a bill must be heard by, acted on in either the House or Senate, voted on, and so forth. Check this calendar and make sure you know your dates.
• Get the Committee Chair to promise a hearing on your issue. Then hold the Chair to that promise.
• On the day of the hearing be prepared and punctual.
• Avoid duplication of testimony for maximum effectiveness.
• Make sure testimony is relevant to the hearing.
• If you have written testimony hand your written testimony or memorandum to staff; making sure each Committee member has a copy and also staff. Come prepared with these copies do not ask staff or aides to make these copies.
• In Washington State people testifying will be call up in panels or three persons.
• Committee hearings are typically no longer than 2 hours and will deal with many issues, Exec Session, and Caucus.
• Know that your may get a hearing but that does not mean you are listened to.
• Be ready to negotiate unless you proposed legislation has no opposition.
• Secure a lobbyist from a respected group if you can, for your hearing.
• The day of the Committee Hearing have everyone sign in, put whether they support or oppose the bill, who they represent, address, phone, and email. This roster is passed around the Committee so they can see the status.
• You may be either electronically recorded or on TV.
• If you are called to testify properly address the Chair and Committee members.
• Ask your testimony be: FOR THE RECORD.
• Unless you’re the primary sponsor of your bill says otherwise prepare a brief, concise 3 minute presentation. Power points can be used.
• Thank the Chair and Committee for hearing your bill both in the hearing and a note afterward.
• Be prepared to answer any questions.

Moving Forward into Rules

• Should the Chair ‘Exec out’ your bill you have just made it through Committee to Rules.
• Once in Rules your issue base should correspond with the Speaker of the House to address issues in any amended form and addressed to the Speaker of the House.

House of Representative Vote

• If the Speaker of the House see clearly this issue should go to the House Floor the Speaker will pull it out of Rules for a vote on the Floor of the House of Representatives.

Senate Committee Review

• Your issue then goes to the Senate Committee for review. The same process as the House Committee is followed.

Winnowing Between the House and Senate

• Your issue may go back and forth between the Senate and House many times, each getting an opportunity to change it.

Code Reviser Review

• Once the Senate and House have thoroughly gone through your bill and voted on it, the issue in our State goes to the Code Reviser who ensures that this legislation does not conflict with other legislation. This does not happen in all other states.

Singing Your Bill into Law

• Once the bill is adopted and singed by the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House it goes to the Governor for signature.

Governor Veto Power

• In Washington State the Governor has line item veto power which means each line can be either approved or not.

Overriding the Governor

• If your bill has been altered to radically and contrasts with version passed out of the house and Senate they make take a vote to over-ride the Governor with a 2/3 vote in both houses. If the Governor fails to act on the bill it still becomes law even without the signature.

There are always *Miracle Bills* up until the last day of Session

• Always remember, until the last day of session, there are *miracle bills*.

Enactment into Law

• Hopefully your issue has made it through and becomes enacted into law.

I am not an expert, always work with and take the advice of your bill’s primary sponsor. The above are just nuggets from the trenches.

Celeste

nonaiswa.org

Olympia-As we move through the legislative process it is important that we keep up our communication with our legislator’s and our momentum. The Amendment to HB 15 is now in the Rules Committee. There are several things that we need to do this week.

The most important is to write a hard copy letter to the Speaker of the House. We need to impress upon the speaker that this issue, our work group, is vital to all Washingtonians. Hence we need all Washingtonian’s representing various segments to write this letter. It needs to be hard copy, no e-mails, no phone calls; hard copy letters only.

The letter must include any or all of following four topics:

1. Speak ONLY to the current bill.

2. Speak to the unknowns of NAIS.

3. Speak to the impact NAIS will have on small farmers, property owners, related businesses, etc…

4. Speak to the fact that official studies (risk analysis, impact statements, financial impacts statements, etc..) have never been done to see what impact NAIS will have on Washington State.

Address your hard copy letter to:

Speaker of the House Chopp

PO Box 40600

Olympia, WA 98504

Rules will NOT ‘pull’ this bill forward to the Floor of the House unless the Speaker of the House gets a clear message from you, your friends, and all Washingtonian’s that this issue must be studied before any further legislation is considered and any more commitments and agreements are made by Washington agencies such as WSDA, promoting this program.

Letters must be to the Speaker of the House no later than March 9, 2007 so that he might review your letter.

The Speaker of the House will make his decision on or before March 13, 2007.

Take time to write your letter today.

Remember: Unless you participate in our legislative process, don’t complain. More than ever in the history of our nation it is important to be, ‘We the people’ and let your voices be heard.

Olympia- On Monday afternoon a greatly modified striker of our NoNAIS proposed language moved out of committee into the Rules Comittee. This language is very different than our proposal in negotiations which occurred Wednesday afternoon, February 21, 2007. We went into negotiations with many species groups, interested parties, and Representatives when we were informed HB 1151 would not move out of committee, essentially it was ‘killed’.

We submitted a two-fold proposition in lieu of our original language. (1) Convening a work group to study the impact and risks of NAIS to all sectors. (2) Putting a stay of action on NAIS in Washington State for the period of one year following the enactment into law.

Legislative staff took our language and worked on it further last weekend. On Monday afternoon it went to the Agricultural Committee for approval without any of the original parties who had taken place in the negotiations seeing it. The language was agreeable to the Chair and was moved out of the Ag Committee.

Although we are disappointed that our original language did not make get passed out of Committee we are in much better shape than other states whose NoNAIS language turned into pro-NAIS language. We were adamant that our amendment not go in that direction.

This striker is a stepping stone to our end goal, NoNAIS in Washington State. Realistically, it would have been extremely unlikely for HB 1151 to move forward with two passionate opposing sides.

The merits of taking this move are:

We keep the issue of NoNAIS alive in Washington State.

We build our integrity and interaction with our legislators.

We build our Coalition of NoNAIS of Washington State.

We get to ‘officially’ study the impacts and risks to all Washingtonians of NAIS.

We have a limited amount of time to collect the real facts on NAIS and then present them to ‘officially’ to the Legislature.

We managed to ‘stay’ pro-NAIS legislation in Washington State although the NAIS program moves forward unofficially.

We move through our counties and industry working on NoNAIS Resolutions which can then be presented to the Legislature.

We thank the Agricultural Chair and Committee for hearing HB 1151 despite the typical avoidance of hearing *contentious* proposed legislation.

And, I thank each one of you who took your time and talents to work on getting NoNAIS in Washington State a reality.

Language of Striker

Now is the time to move forward….. we have much to do.

Celeste

nonaiswa.org

Audio HB1151 2-21-07

Below you will find a PDF on the Electronic Proposed Legislation in Washington State.

Electronic Privacy Proposed Legislation in Washington State

Celeste

nonaiswa@gmail.com

Snohomish-NoNAISWA has just received its first document from the USDA FOIA request. We are posting it for you to examine. More documents “are in the mail”.

USDA FOIA Document

Celeste

nonaiswa@gmail.com

Olympia, WA-On Wednesday morning at 8 AM HB, 1151 was heard. Segments of the cattle industry, equine industry, our core group, along with other interested parties convened in Hearing Room B for the Agriculture Committee to hear our NoNAIS proposed legislation. Many bills were heard that day, and Executive Session was held, along with breaking into caucus. All that takes time but Representative Sullivan true to his word heard HB 1151. Our bill’s sponsor Representative Pearson kicked off the testimony. In order for our proposed legislation to be heard during “crunch time” we agreed to have a three “for”, three “against”, panel.

The “against” panel felt this issue was so critical to their cause they imported a high price lobbyist to present their case along with the Dairy Federation. We were delighted when Chairman Sullivan went into overtime to hear from other “for” people who had traveled a great distance to testify in support of HB 1151.

It was rapidly apparent that the NONAIS bill was not going to proceed out of committee so a group representing all species convened and worked through the day to see if we could present an alternative that would be acceptable to the Agricultural Committee. Our recommendation was presented to the Ag Committee late on Wednesday evening.

We are waiting to see if the Ag Committee has accepted our proposal. Right now it is a cliff-hanger. NO ACTION IS NECESSARY, RIGHT NOW. But stay tuned……

Celeste

nonaiswa@gmail.com

I am hoping that tomorrow we will hear something on the hearing of HB 1151. We asked for the” Full Meal Deal” with HB 1151. That is a good thing, but realistically we probably won’t get everything we asked for. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get but not getting the whole deal is the way of life. (Personally, I have only received the whole deal once in my life, and that turned to an embarrassing situation) I gotta tell the story. My friend and I purchased a bundt cake which had just come out. We sliced a piece. Then, another. It was a dark and stormy night, we were way in the country, and the kids were tucked in bed. She looked at me, I looked at her. We sliced the cake in half and divided it up between the two of us. We thought it was safe. Knock, knock. Can you believe it? There we were each with a half a cake on our plate and we had guests. How embarrassing! This is the same friend I stayed with in Olympia during Session.

So along the line of long distance running, and some possibly interpreting not getting the entire HB 1151 as failure, I did receive this in my Inbox this morning……

Failure

——-

Failure is wasted if you return only to the place from where you fell. If your plans fail, think bigger, aim higher.

So here we go…… whether we get it all or not, let’s aim higher <smile>. We can do it with a great bunch like y’all. Even if we get precisely what we want there are a whole lot of states who need us.

Representatives Lovick and Representative Hans Dunshee will be at Lake Stevens School on March 17, 2007 for a Town Hall Meeting. This is a great opportunity to thank Representaive Dunshee for his support of No NAIS HB 1151 and to discuss the NoNAIS further. Put your comments in writing and to talk over the NoNAIS issue. Representative Lovick is in the education process about NoNAIS.

We plan to introduce to Snohomish County a Snohomish County NoNAIS Resolution proposal. Let’s get our Representative’s on board while educating the public on the dangers of NAIS.

The address is: 12309 22nd St NE

Lake Stevens, WA

Time: 10-12

Celeste

nonaiswa@gmail.com

Alert Snohomish County-Make your voices heard!

Ordinance No. 06-133

Celeste