[LWVNM Action] Legislative Action Study Group

[kwentworth17 at comcast.net]

Akkana-

Almost no one understands the implications of bills from reading them. You
can read the words, but that doesn't give you the actual impact on people. 

The best way to understand a particular bill is to listen to the first
committee to hear it. That's when you will hear the lobbyists explain the
positive impact, and the opposition groups who will explore the negative
impact. The fiscal impact reports are also very helpful. After folks hear
about it in the first committee is the best time to talk about a bill in an
action workshop because you will have some basis for discussion.

It's not very helpful to listen to bills before the judicial committees. You
will learn about legal impacts there, but not much about people impacts. And
listening to bill discussions on the floor of either house is a crapshoot.
Either helpful or completely worthless.

Sorry to be so wordy. These are lessons learned from years of covering the
legislature as a reporter.

I would be happy to join an action study group.

Karen Wentworth

-----Original Message-----
From: Action <action-bounces at mailman.swcp.com> On Behalf Of Akkana Peck via
Action
Sent: Saturday, January 8, 2022 9:42 AM
To: action at mailman.swcp.com
Cc: Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com>
Subject: Re: [LWVNM Action] Legislative Action Study Group

To people interested in the study group:

I forgot that this mailing list sometimes obscures the email address of
people replying. If you want to be on the mailing list, please email me at
akkana at shallowsky.com -- don't just reply to this message, or if you do
reply, change the To line to my address.

If you've replied already, no need to reply again -- I found email addresses
for everybody who's replied so far.

        ...Akkana

Akkana Peck writes:
> At the Action Committee meeting today, I mentioned an idea I'd had:
> an Action study group.
> 
> The problem: legislative advocacy is hard. For instance,
>   - Finding anything on the Legislative website
>   - Reading and understanding a bill
>   - Understanding our League positions and how they allow us to
>     advocate for or against bills
>   - Speaking in public for or against a bill
> 
> The Advocacy Workshop (tomorrow!) covers the last item, but how do you 
> learn the other three?
> 
> I proposed a study group that meets (at least) once a week where we 
> mentor each other and learn together. Everybody's welcome, from 
> complete beginners to experts.
> 
> We could do things like parcel out new bills to study group members:
> choose a bill on a topic you're interested in, read it, try to 
> understand it, and report back telling us what it's about and whether 
> we should support or oppose it. If a bill was too convoluted to be 
> understood, that's useful information too (sometimes that means 
> somebody is trying to hide what a bill is really about, or maybe it 
> just needs several people reading it and trying to figure it out). We 
> can report our findings at the regular Friday Action Committee 
> meetings.
> 
> If you want to be involved, let me know. I have a few people signed up 
> already. I'll collect any more names I get over the weekend, and then 
> we can figure out when to meet and how we want to run this.
> 
>         ...Akkana
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