Welcome to Digital Arts Legislation Day

PRIMER TO INFLUENCING CALIFORNIA PUBLIC POLICY AND LEGISLATION

A VISIT TO THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE 10 AM THURSDAY, MARCH 10

Welcome to Digital Arts Legislation Day. Your job this morning is to visit one or two legislators or their staff. You will introduce yourself, make a brief case for digital arts in general, ask them to support the bill or resolution we have created that you have been assigned, leave behind material and promise to follow-up. End every visit with a smile and a big “thank you.” This is true even if the member or staff disagrees with you and/or says they will not support you. Generally, the member or staffer will listen politely and make no commitment. The main thing is be clear, concise, genuine, and persuasive.

Background to the Visit

We plan to try and call the targeted legislators offices to let them know you are coming, but, most likely you will encounter a staff person since the legislators are “in session” on Thursday morning. That means they are meeting as a “house” the Assembly meets as a whole in the Assembly Chambers and the Senate meets in the Senate Chambers. Because they must be in session to get their weekly per diem, most legislators pay attention to this requirement. However, around noon they will often break and most will return to their home districts which the normally do at the end of each week. Some may be around.

Legislators wear two hats in the Legislature. The first is they represent their district. There are 80 Assembly districts in California each district represents about 430,000 constituents who live within the district boundaries. The second hat is that legislators also meet in committees. When meeting in committees they are acting on behalf of the whole state with expertise in the content area of the committee. In this capacity they are “policy makers.” There about a dozen “standing committees” in each of the Assembly (and the Senate). The purpose of these specialized committees is to hear and pass or reject legislation that has been assigned to them on topic.

When a bill is introduced by a member of either house it will first go to Rules committee of that house, called “the house of origin.” for assignment, (no vote) then to a standing committee (generally called the policy committee hearing) and usually to Appropriations committee (called the fiscal committee hearing) if it has fiscal consequences and almost all bills are construed to have fiscal consequences. If they pass out of these committees they will then go to the Assembly floor for a vote. If the bill includes funding the bill requires a 2/3 vote of the house or 54 votes. If it does not have serious fiscal consequences or funding it may require only a simple majority or 41 votes. Once it passes the full house it will go onto the “other” house for a similar journey. Therefore most bills will make six stops for votes.

When constituents show up to advocate a cause in a bill, as you are doing, there is really two ways to approach the legislator. One way is to go to your home legislator, no matter what committees he or she serves on because eventually all members will vote on every bill. This is the most effective advocacy because legislators know that as a constituent, you have a vote when they come up for their re-election, and even if they do not, they try and do what the people back home want them to do.

The second approach you as an advocate can take is to advocate for a particular issue or cause. This is the more typical “lobbying” and in fact most interests in the legislature have paid staff people called lobbyists who work for a company or trade association or are “contract” lobbyists who are essentially hired guns who know the system well and who have vast contacts in the Capitol.

Obviously, the most potent advocate is one who is passionate about an issue, in our case, digital arts instruction for children and youth AND who is a district constituent.

The Assembly is Our House of Origin for all three of our pieces of legislation

In our case, since all three of our legislative items or bills originate in the Assembly we will concentrate your efforts in that house and temporarily ignore the Senate, which for our purposes will be called the “second” house. That is, all of our bills will have to pass through Assembly Committees and the Assembly floor first before they move on, if they move on.

Bills are generally introduced in January and February; a few are introduced as mere shells with no content only an idea. These are called “spot” bills. That is, they take a spot and are assigned a bill number but the exact language of the bill has yet to be determined.

AB 1582 Economic Incentives

Our “economic incentive bill AB 1582 authored by Assemblyman Dymally is just such a spot bill. In this case we will be arguing for passage of a bill that will establish economic incentives for technology and entertainment industry companies in digital arts and media communications to receive some kind of “incentive”, a tax credit, a reduction in fees or some other material benefit if they support a Digital Arts Studio Partnership with their resources. The exact nature of these “incentives” has yet to be worked out.

ACR XXXX Dymally

Our Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) has language that has been provided to you. Procedurally, an ACR, is not law and therefore does not have to go to the Governor for his signature. It has no introduction deadlines except final deadlines later in the session.

An ACR is introduced to any of the following:

clarify previous legislative intent,
to commend a person or organization,
to call for hearings,
to seek the creation of boards or temporary panels,
to request a study or a host of other purposes.

While they do not instruct citizens to perform any specific function they are useful because they define ”legislative public policy.” When the legislature has passed a resolution a “sense of the legislature” has been established. That is the state legislature passes a set of beliefs and policies but has not yet mandated anyone to do anything in a statutory sense.

In our case it is for the purpose of underscoring the need for DASP and calls upon the legislature to hold hearings calling together many sectors of the state and the Education system apparatus, with industry, to help solve the pressing issues in digital arts and communications.

These “vehicles” are often provocative and the language is flowery and often strike people as being “overblown.’ This is done intentionally to get the attention of legislators. These function at times as an alarm bell for the legislature that says ”pay attention, something serious is afoot here that requires attention.”

AB252 (Chavez)-DASP Sunset Extension

The third bill is the “sunset extension” bill. This is AB 252 (Chavez). Whenever a new program is established such as DASP (through the passage of SB 1937 (Costa) in 2003), the legislature hedges its bets by placing a “sunset” date in the enabling act. This sunset will end the program on a particular date unless new legislation is passed to extend the program. In essence all new programs are put on “on trial” first for a short period and usually for longer periods if they are successful. For DASP to continue past January 1, 2006, a sunset extension must be passed and signed by the Governor. If this fails, DASP will be no more and we will have lost our momentum and a great deal more. Sunset extensions are usually much less difficult to pass than enabling acts but they can be nettlesome. They require attention by the field

TASKS

Your task is as follows:

Attend our lobbying training session Thursday at 9 am where you will receive the necessary coaching in what you should do.
Pick up and study your legislative packet. You will have one bill or ACR to advocate.
You will be given directions to see two (or three) legislators/staffers.
Your job is to see “somebody” in the legislature, even if it is an intern. Try and meet the elected member but the staff director or legislative staffers are really just as good.
You will introduce yourself and the reason for your visit, that is “hello we are from your district and would like to orient you to an important bill that will be coming before you.” Then you will go over the talking points as we have laid them out in the context of your own experience and needs – student, teacher, professional, businessperson etc.
You will have two sets of talking points. One set is general. It is broken down by your role, such as teachers, industry, etc. These general talking points are telling the assembly member or staffer that the Digital Arts Partnership is important from every perspective. Try and find the role most familiar to you. If nothing else you can always be a parent (if you are) or a community person (everyone is one).
Everyone should begin by making a twenty second introduction, “I am a teacher and a constituent in your district” or “I am a teacher who feels strongly about kids having access to digital arts” or “ I am a parent who can tell you from personal experience how important this program is” or “ I am a student who takes digital arts (or even I am a student and I don’t have the opportunity to have this and we need your help.” Everyone should have some “handle.” A note of caution: many legislators who do not want to be “lobbied” or staffers who don’t want to be pressured will try and stay on introductions as long as possible and never get to the meat of the meeting. Someone in the group needs to say,” I know your time is precious so we want to make sure we get a few minutes to make our case to you.”

Then there should be three people to speak if possible:

A person who knows the legislator if possible. If not the most prominent member of the group who announces the purpose of the visit (see above).
A person to tell the story – a youth or parent or teacher who tells the member or staff that DASP has helped the student succeed in school or get a job.
A person who is an expert on the DASP process. This will be one of the steering committee members or someone else who is at ease with our documents.

Then someone should “make the ask” That is, one member of the group of four or five should be prepared to say “ well now that you have heard us describe DASP, we would like you to vote for XXX (the bill or ACR you have been assigned) when it comes before you in the XXXX committee.
You will have a folder that has the name of the legislator, there approximate district, the committee they serve on, a copy of the fact sheet that you will want to “leave behind” (that is what they are called leave behinds) and business cards from as many people in your group as possible.

Debriefing DASP Leadership

One member of the group ought to take a moment to tell Paul Minicucci or Bill Bronson or Martha Diaz what happened at the legislator’s office(s). This way we can get a sense of where we need to shore things up.

Follow-UP Tasks

We do not have a good sense of the legislation hearing schedule in the Assembly as yet. When the time comes we will send out a call for everyone to touch bases again with a member. Everyone should make two phone calls, or write two letters. First, they should write or call the “committee chair “ at his/her office. Secondly, you should write or call your own home district assembly member. If you or close friends know anyone else in the legislature call them as well.

The other important role is to take the legislative package home with you. You will need to recruit other people in your circle to make calls and write letters too. If you are a member of an organization or association you should try and enlist their support. If you are a teacher you should call your association contact (either CAEA or CTA or whomever) and ask them to take a support position on the bills.

In any case you should check in to the DASP website often to see what news is happening. We will put important dates, tasks, and so forth on the website.

Remember, the more everyone does the less each person has to do. That is, there is political power in numbers! We need to come together as a field and hang in there together in the legislative process. We can’t get this done without you. Please take this seriously. It may well be the most important piece of society/civic business you do this year.

Thanks!! The DASP Legislative Action Committee

Paul Minicucci Martha Diaz William Bronston, MD

Arts Consultant Education Legislative Consultant Coordinator, DASPA