Legislation

Legislative Action Winter 2012 – 2013

Mary Johnson, Vice President for Legislative Action

The committee met November 12-13 in Utica to wrap up our successes and unfinished business from last year. Sometimes it takes repetition to get lawmakers to sign on to bills that protect and advance our interests. That is why you see items like the minimum pension bump up and the mommies bill repeated as legislative priorities. We are finding a need to get more people involved at the local level. If you are interested, just contact your unit president and we will sign you up. Training is available and we try to do our visits in small groups. The 2012 Annual Convention produced several resolutions that will help to guide our work this year and next. We addressed those resolutions at the meeting and reviewed possible legislation to support those items. Janice Mullins is preparing more legislation for our review at a December conference call. Our goal this year is to get out early to advocate for our issues. We need to be there before all the budget bills are passed. Therefore, we plan to have our campaign card ready for the executive board’s review by February 1 so that our activists can start making appointments in March. This will put us two months ahead of last year’s advocacy. Then we can focus on Federal issues at our March meeting. We welcome input from our members, so feel free to call or e-mail me with your ideas. 607.427.4748 and mjohnson23@stny.rr.com