OGR Local Legislative Liaison

OGR: Local Legislative Liaison (Leah Haberman)

Dear __________,

Congratulations on being hired as the Associated Students of the University of Washington Office of Government Relations’ next Local Legislative Liaison! I am extremely confident in your qualifications and ability to take this position to new heights. I hope you have fun with it and find it rewarding!

The role of Local Legislative Liaison is very self-directed, which I would consider both a challenge and an opportunity. The main aspects of the job are being an advocate for local issues that affect students, such as affordable housing and transportation, and conducting policy research keeping the office organized and assisting as needed. Sometimes, the job is responding to events that emerge (for example, informing students about an upcoming public transportation related ballot measure, or the opportunity to sit on a city housing committee, or testifying at city hall).

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-Track local legislation (especially at the city level)

-Schedule meetings with City Councilmembers, City Officials, County Councilmembers, County Officials

-Attend public hearings for bills/resolutions

-Identify opportunities for partnerships with local legislative bodies

-Meet with NGOs, non-profits, other relevant community stakeholders to help build coalitions

-Conduct policy research on pertinent local issues so you are well versed in local policy

-Fall: Meet with as many local officials as possible at city/county level to discern what will be relevant legislative issues to work on. Identify key pieces of legislation that you want to target/work on/help pass.

-Winter: Continue to meet with relevant officials as you pursue different legislative avenues. Try to testify at least once (if not more) at a public hearing on at least one bill.

-Spring: Hopefully by spring you will have worked on a couple pieces of successful legislation. Spend spring preparing your transition docs and tying up any loose ends. Also a great time to host a local oriented event on campus.

-Most of the main people you need to contact can be found online just by googling Seattle City Council, Seattle’ Mayor’s Office, King County Council, etc. Make sure to contact both the legislator as well as their staff when attempting to set up meetings, I would try to set up as many meetings as possible in the fall.

-Opportunities for partnership will inevitably come up over the course of the year. When people reach out to you requesting a meeting, take the opportunity to meet with them, learn about the work they’re doing, and then explore the potential for partnerships.

-I would highly recommend starting to email city and county officials in August to set up your meetings in September/early October so you will have finished the bulk of your meetings by the time Leg. Steering roles around and it’s time to start work on the Local Legislative Agenda. Make a nice, general introductory email requesting a meeting you can copy/paste and send it to all of the City Councilmembers and somebody from the Mayor’s office. Reach out to the county at your discretion, they do a lot of work around public transportation (Sound Transit/King County Metro) so it’s good to connect with them as well though less important.

-Also, reach out to Sally Clark and Aaron Hoard as soon as you can. Sally and Aaron do local external affairs for the University and are well versed and plugged in. Sally especially is somebody who I worked on different commissions with and met with a few times and she was very helpful.

-I would also recommend trying to find different opportunities to serve on different Boards or Commissions. I’ve served on the U-District Business Improvement Area Board (BIA) and the West Campus Development Commission this year. I think BIA will carry over to next year but I’m not sure about WCDC. Talk to the ASUW President/Director of University Affairs and see if you can take some of their stuff off their hands even as a proxy. Also, I could never make the University Transportation Committee (UTC) work with my class schedule, but this is an excellent committee for your role. Talk to the Director of University of Affairs about this and Sally, and also know that Sally will likely be able to identify other areas for you to get involved. Finding interesting things to do is an important part of your role.

-Like I said, you want to meet with as many members of the city council as possible in September and early October. Put a name to your face, get to know them, and ask questions about what some of the key issues each councilmember and their staffs are working on this year and identify things that ASUW can play a role in. It is especially important to meet with our City Councilmember, Rob Johnson. Rob suggested that we meet once every month and a half this year but his scheduler was never able to make it work because he has a difficult schedule with young kids, I would encourage you to try and institutionalize this. Rob is a great guy and a good resource and really cares about student issues too.

-Basically the same thing with the city, I would really try and front load as many meetings as you can into the first few weeks of the job. I ended having to cancel a couple county meetings because I wasn’t able to get on their schedule until finals week fall quarter and it just didn’t work out. King County does a lot of stuff around Metro and also homelessness so these are good opportunities to get involved. I also would say at the least you should meet with the King County officials who are on the Sound Transit board and continue to advocate for a Ballard-U-District light rail line in a hypothetical ST4, assuming that is included in your local legislative agenda.

-I have worked a lot around the U-District rezone this year and have found it very interesting and probably my biggest legislative focus. I know the city will be considering another round of zoning changes (though much less ambitious than the U-District zoning change) in 2018. This will also include potential zoning changes (of 10-20 feet) to the ave, which had a moratorium placed on it for the U-District rezone. These will be good issues to stay involved in, and likely very contentious. Obviously, follow your local legislative agenda for guidance on how to advocate. I also am working with the city on establishing a renter’s commission that ideally would institutionalize a seat for an ASUW representative or UW student. Like a lot of this, identify opportunities and then pursue them. Seattle’s affordable housing crisis may be mitigated, but affordable housing will always be a key issue to students.

-I was appointed to the U-District Business Improvement Area (BIA). The BIA is a group of small business owners from within the U-District community that work together to make the U-District a cleaner, safer, more liveable neighborhood but also works to attract new business investment to the neighborhood. I am assuming that you will be able to stay on in this position and would encourage you to do so, it’s very interesting and only meets quarterly. Again just to reiterate, opportunities like this are a great part of this job so I would encourage you to find even more ways to get involved.

-I have not been quite as involved in transportation since ST3 has passed as I would have originally liked to be. I think it would be ideal if you could find a way onto the University Transportation Committee because that’s an opportunity to gain a lot of very valuable knowledge. Also, I would encourage you to stay engaged with Sound Transit, specifically on a Ballard – U-District light rail line if that is a plank in next year’s local legislative agenda.