BY TAYLOR BENNETT, POLICY COORDINATOR, THE HUB

Successful policy initiatives aren’t started on day 1 of the legislative session, nor do they end on day 60. As this year’s legislative session ends, I’m already thinking about what the coming year will bring and how citizen lobbyists can set themselves up for success in 2021.

Annual Policy Phases

The work of creating a successful policy initiative is often done in phases. The graphic below describes one way to break down the work that goes into building an effective policy initiative:

Rest and Update

The months directly following the legislative session are a great time to rest, take a moment to reflect on what happened during the session, and update those you’re working with on what took place. It’s also a good time to celebrate and thank legislators and partners for their support on any successes that you’ve had. 

Internal Strategy Development

During the months of May, June, and July, it’s important to answer a few key questions:

What am I going to try to accomplish in 2021?

This is a moment to get specific. Maybe you already know what you want to accomplish, if, say, a bill you were working on last year didn’t pass. Or, maybe now is the moment to build on past success and set a new goal. 

Who do I need on my side in order to be successful?

Use this opportunity to think about everyone whose support you may need in order to reach your goals. This could include members of a team you’re building to support your initiative. This could include: 

• Someone who is an expert on your topic 
• Someone who can draft your bill
• Someone who is great at telling your story 

It may also include legislators who care deeply about the issues you do, or even legislators who you’d like to win over to your cause. It could also include allies of other kinds like nonprofit organizations, associations, unions or other advocacy groups. 

How will I explain to others why my objective needs to happen?

In order to reach your goal, you’ll need to be able to tell the story of why that goal needs to happen. What do legislators care about? How are the things that they care about connected to what you’re trying to accomplish? And who will your message be best received from? 

Coalition Strategy

In order to implement the strategy you identified in the previous months, you’ll need more than just yourself. This is a moment to build strong relationships with the individuals and organizations you identified during the last phase – the stakeholders – that you’ll need in order to make everything happen. Taking the time to work together to create a shared goal and a clear outline of what needs to happen in the coming months is vital to your success.

Implementation Phase I

September through December is a good time to begin implementing the strategy that you’ve developed and honed with your stakeholders. This could mean all kinds of things: 

• Meeting with legislators in their home districts or during interim meetings to educate them on the importance of your initiative.
• Reaching out to legislators to ask them to sponsor your bill. 
• Holding community meetings to educate the public on why your issue is important and gain support. 
• Drafting a bill.
• Writing an Op-ed or a Letter to the Editor to publicize your policy solution. 
• Planning the roles that team members will cover during the upcoming session.
• Identifying possible opponents and thinking through how you plan to approach their opposition. 

This time is vital in laying the groundwork that you’ll need in order to be successful in the upcoming session. Legislators are more comfortable supporting legislation they feel familiar with, so using this time to help provide information to them will mean less scramble during the session.

Implementation Phase II

It’s session time again! This is when the strategy you developed comes to fruition. By this time, you should have bill sponsors for any piece of legislation you want to introduce. It’s good practice to introduce a bill as early as you can, to give yourself the maximum amount of time to help move it through the legislative process. This phase is about building on the groundwork you laid in previous phases: providing legislators with the tools that they need in order to make the argument for your policy solution, and calling in support from your stakeholders when needed.

How to Get all This Done

This may seem like a daunting amount of work for one person to accomplish, and in truth – it is. That’s why the most effective policy initiatives that I’ve seen citizen lobbyists work on are ones that they take on with a team of people.

There are advocacy organizations working on all kinds of policy initiatives in West Virginia. If you have an idea to tackle challenges faced by WV citizens, chances are there is a group who would love to hear your idea. Finding an advocacy group is also a great idea for anyone who wants to take action on an issue, but hasn’t come up with a specific policy solution.

Even if your team is just you and a few friends who feel strongly about the same issue, you’ll be infinitely more successful together.

Still Have Questions?

Even after all this information, there’s still a lot more to being effective at the Capitol. If you still have questions about how the policy work continues, reach out to Taylor at t.bennett@wvhub.org.  

BY TAYLOR BENNETT, POLICY COORDINATOR, THE HUB

The 2020 Legislative Session came to an end on Saturday, February 7th at midnight. This year 355 bills, 187 House bills, 168 Senate bills, made their way across the finish line – the most bills of any session since 1993.

Bills that have completed legislative action are described as “enrolled.” This means that they are undergoing proofreading before being sent to the Governor’s Office. Once there, the Governor can sign the bill into law, veto it, or do nothing – in which case the bill becomes law in 14 days, even without the Governor’s signature.

This year, The Hub developed new bill tracking criteria based on topics brought to us directly by the teams of community members we work with every day.

Here’s a look at how this session shook out in the areas they highlighted:

Vacant Properties

Of the 19 bills we were tracking related to vacant properties, 3 of them passed:

SB 510 – Land Reuse Agencies and the right of first refusal at the county tax sale. 

This bill gives Land Reuse Agencies (LRAs) improved criteria by which properties qualify for the Right of First Refusal at the county tax sale. Essentially, LRAs now have tools to address more of the vacant, abandoned, and dilapidated properties that can cause challenges in our communities. 

HB 4452 – Extending the amount of time a tax lien purchaser has to claim title to a property

This bill allows people who purchase a tax lien at the county tax sale and provide notice to the original property owner like they are supposed to, they are allowed to have a 30 day extension after the regularly allotted time frame to claim the title to the property on which the lien was placed.

HB 4797 – Allowing municipalities to place properties into receivership under certain circumstances

This bill only applies to properties that present an imminent danger to adjacent structures or the community. For these properties, it allows municipalities to take responsibility for, or appoint another organization to take responsibility for making the necessary repairs if the owner of the property can’t be found, or refuses to do so themselves. Placing a bill in receivership doesn’t mean that the municipality owns the property.

A few that didn’t make the cut were SB 265, which would have set up a fund to support the demolition of problem properties; and HB 4097 which would have required local governments to run programs to help rehab unsafe properties.

Trails

This year, we followed the progress of 8 bills related to recreational trail development. Of those, 4 completed legislative action. Here’s a deeper diver on two of them:

SB 738 – Creating a flatwater trail commission

This bill sets up a commission designed to identify potential “flatwater trails” or systems of lakes and rivers that are easily traversable by canoes and kayaks. The commission is also responsible for creating procedures by which organizations can create and maintain these types of trails.

HB 4499 – The Mountaineer Trail Authority

This bill continues the Mountaineer Trail Authority that was created last year – an entity that supports the development and maintenance of an extensive trail network in Northern WV. It removes permitting requirements for trail usage and adds additional counties to the network.

One bill that didn’t make it was SB 829, which would have created a fund to develop locations in WV as destinations for overland recreation.

Economic Development

Ten bills related to economic development made it onto our bill tracker this year. Only 1 bill we were tracking in this category passed:

HB 4001- Creating the West Virginia Impact Fund

The primary piece of legislation offered by the Speaker of the House this year, HB 4001 creates a special revenue fund and an office to administer it. The fund is aimed at drawing large scale development and infrastructure projects to West Virginia as a way to create jobs. It requires a minimum project investment of $25 million.

Bills that didn’t survive in this topic area include:

• SB 86 – Creating the Stay in State Tax Credit
• HB 2576 – Creating a tax credit for new businesses that locate in West Virginia
• HB 2887 – Creating a tax credit for businesses in low income communities.
• HB 3026 – Creating a tax credit for businesses which hire, promote, and develop women and minorities into executive, professional, or administrative roles.
• HB 4871 – The Creation of an Economic and Community Development Task Force

Seasoned citizen lobbyists know that it’s rare to get everything you’re after in a legislative session. For those interested in trail development, the 2020 legislative session was a good one. For those working on dilapidated properties it was a bit of a mixed bag. It’s interesting to note that almost every policy solution offered on the topic of economic development was a tax credit, and almost all of them failed to pass.

How did the 2020 session shape up on the issues you’re interested in the most?

BY TAYLOR BENNETT, POLICY COORDINATOR, THE HUB

As a bill works its way through the legislative process, it encounters a number of turning points at which its supporters need to make tough calls. For citizen lobbyists, or West Virginians who are interested in being a part of the policymaking process, the most difficult of these decisions may be determining whether a demonstration of public support – a loud voice – or working directly with legislators – a soft voice – is likelier to lead to success. 

Here’s an example: 

You haven’t heard any opposition to your bill, but it’s about to be read on the Senate or House Floor. Do you rally the troops and have your supporters call their legislators to ask them to vote “yes” on the bill, or do you choose not to call attention to your bill because more attention could mean more opposition? 

We’ve talked before about how critical it can be to call in a demonstration of wide-spread public support for your cause. Sometimes, it can be equally vital to a bill’s success to employ a different strategy. 

Here are two considerations to keep in mind:

1.Are legislators already headed in the right direction?

In some cases, action on a bill has stalled and it may take overwhelming pressure from the public to inspire action. In others, however, legislators may already see some or all of the merits of the bill you’re working on and are simply having a difficult time fitting it in to all of the work they have to do. If so, you might opt for a lower input strategy, having a few key supporters talk to legislators in person, rather than mounting a phone call or email offensive.

2. Would your decision create a fight where one does not already exist?

We all know that certain pieces of legislation can cause division at the legislature. If the issue you’re working on may cause legislators to come down on opposite sides of an argument, it pays to spend time developing responses to your opposition and preparing your legislative champions to use them. On the other hand, if you feel that many legislators generally support your cause, it’s important to think critically about how a decision to rally the troops may impact the situation. Creating a fight where there wasn’t one before can be counterproductive.

Here are a few important things to remember in situations where you’ve determined that a softer touch is necessary:

• Continue to explore other options for action. Just because you decide that hundreds of supporters calling their legislators or hosting a rally at the Capitol isn’t the right course of action doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t act at all. Think about other ways that you can continue encouraging legislators to support or oppose a bill. You might consider smaller lobby meetings, personal outreach, or ask a supportive legislator to talk to them on your behalf.

• Stay in the loop.
• Things can change quickly during the legislative process. Even after you’ve made the tough call about what’s best for this situation, doesn’t mean that you won’t need to make another decision in short order. Check out this article for more on how to keep yourself informed.

• Listen to your champions.
• When things start to progress differently than what you’d hoped for, it’s easy to feel a moment of panic. When this happens, check in with the legislators who have been leading the charge on the bill in question. They often have more details about the process and the long term plan of leadership in the House and Senate than are being widely, publicly communicated. While this isn’t the only information to pay attention to, if they aren’t concerned, try to curb your worries.

For every citizen lobbyist, there will be moments in which you will need to determine whether a loud voice or a soft one will be more effective. Weighing these considerations can help ensure that these difficult decisions are well reasoned. In the end, the choices about how to support a piece of legislation belong to you and those supporting it with you.