Bangor Legislative Committee approves code amendment, discusses lobbying strategy

[0:29] Daniel Carson: All right, good evening and welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Legislative Committee. It is 8:42 p.m. on June 15th, 2006. I am the committee chair, Councillor Daniel Carson, and also around the table we have fellow committee members Councillor Susan Dean, Councillor Carolyn Fish, Councillor Angela Walker, and we'll be joined shortly by committee member Council Joseph Leonard. We're also joined around the table by other councillors, Susan Faloon, Council Chair Haas, and City Manager Carollynn Lear. We have three agenda items this evening. The first is the Legislative Committee Ordinance Amendments. As you'll recall, in the last Legislative Committee meeting, we did discuss amending the chapter nine of the city code, article eight, section H for the Legislative Committee to add the ability to engage in conversations with candidates for office partners and other stakeholders on topics falling within the purview of the legislative committee that draft language is in front of you in your packet. That is the only change in that section. So go ahead and open it up for questions comments councilman [2:00] Joseph Leonard: I just very quickly I think this gives the committee even more to do what it's a intended creation was so I'm completely in favor of this I wouldn't go forward to make a motion to accept the recommended changes [2:19] Daniel Carson: Your emotion. We have a second motion and seconded. Is there any doubt coming for the full council agenda item number two is lobbying services as promised from our last meeting manager leader. [2:35] Carollynn Lear: Yes, and before I do that when I just want to know that grace in this is here. And I think going forward, Grace is going to work with me on the legislative committee, particularly because I would anticipate that at some point, drafting will come out of our work. And so I think it makes sense to have Grace here to help advise on those issues. As you're talking about laws that you want to be passed, it makes sense to have a lawyer here to help advise on that. So we're very excited to have Grace here tonight. night. So one of the things that the committee talked about in its first meeting was whether the city needed to hire or budget for a lobbyist. And I thought it made sense to first talk about the services we already procure to make sure that we aren't duplicating efforts at all. And so there's three organizations that we participate in. The first is the Maine Municipal Association. And that organization has a whole advocacy staff that works with the state legislature during the legislative session, as well as between sessions. They craft their advocacy agenda through a legislative policy committee. I am on that legislative policy committee, and Councilor Carson has been nominated for that legislative policy committee. And so how that all works is as the bills start being released, they'll vote on every bill and determine what position MMA wants to take on that bill, and somewhat of a painstaking process, spoiler alert, Councilor Carson. I think the challenge for us as a city is that although by population we are third largest in the state, we still only have one or two votes on the LPC. And so what winds up happening is that the interests of smaller, more rural communities wind up holding more sway than that of the larger communities. MMA is incredibly valuable to us in many ways outside of legislative advocacy. So I don't mean to diminish their role, but just purely on legislation, we don't always align with the position of the majority on that legislative policy committee. We do pay dues to MMA, but it is sort of a bundled service and we procure many services from MMA. So it's impossible to really tell you how much we could fairly say we pay for advocacy services. The other two organizations that we participate in or the main service center coalition and the main mayor's coalition and i will tell you that there's a good amount of overlap between those two organizations the mayor's coalition is smaller it's made up of only those communities that have mayors so it is probably our most i don't know aligned organization pretty much always the position of the mayor's coalition aligns with a position that Bangor would want to take. We pay roughly $4,000 each year to participate in this group. As I said, the main service center coalition is larger and we pay $4,000 to participate in that group as well. Mitchell Tardy and Jackson is the lobbying firm that represents those two groups before the legislature, and they do a very good job with tracking and reporting out on legislation, so I don't feel like as a city we're missing information. I think where we might have our greatest bang for our buck, if we were to dedicate money, would be if we wanted to have someone on retainer to specifically attend hearings and advocate, or meetings and advocate, on our behalf on a particular piece of legislation that We feel very strongly about, but from a general monitoring standpoint, between what MMA provides for you know regular ongoing report outs of legislation and what Mitchell Tardy Jackson provides, between the service center Coalition and the main mayor's Coalition, I think we have our handle on what's out there. I think what we're challenged to is that to our you know our hour and a half drive down to Augusta and sitting in a committee room all day to tell our story, so if you were interested in pursuing that 's where I would recommend we spend our money [7:49] Joseph Leonard: first with a round of questions so it's not so much a question I just wanted to talk about I 'm on for those of you who don't know I'm also on I'm sorry is this a comment rather [8:04] Daniel Carson: than, yes it's common. Let me take questions first. Sure, okay, questions, any information? All right, back to you counselor letter. Okay, we're on comments now, so [8:19] Joseph Leonard: the small non-profit activist organization that was, that's I am still a part of, the main rail group, we hired a lobbyist to do a lot of our legislative coordination work for a particular bill, a few particular bills that we were championing. And because I have the perspective of championing bills for that nonprofit before we acquired that lobbyist, the amount of support, and it didn't succeed, but the amount of organization, communication, networking, and feedback that we got from that lobbyist was very invaluable. It was very night and day in terms of how we looked at where we were before and what the possibilities were in the future. I do concur with the city manager that I don't think there's a reason for us to have a full-time individual, potentially not even a part-time individual, though I would be open to a part-time lobbyist that we could bring out of the woodworks whenever we wanted to for a particular bill that we wanted to champion that MMA or the mayor's coalition, is that the right one? It's just a bill or an idea for a bill that gets past them. But I think another reason why I would be more in favor of having a lobbyist on call, if I could call it that, is, we are a very unique city where we have an airport service that has no regional competition whatsoever. Huge benefit to us. We also are a service center city where we cater to the 110,000 residents that come into Bangor every day. But also Penobscot County, we already have our own unique issues in terms of the unorganized territories in the north, which I get that the state is the ones that are responsible for those territories, but at the end of the day, those citizens still come to us for a lot of the day-to-day services and activities that they need. The reason why I'm saying all this is Bangor is not like the other cities in this state. Bangor is a very unique city that has very unique situations and very unique problems. And so I think having a lobbyist on hand would be very beneficial to the city. Just having someone with the knowledge of what the issues are in the city and what the council is thinking about doing to go forward, tackling some of these issues to bring to Augusta but also most importantly a lobbyist is able to make those connections networks and communications with people that matter most to us when we need to make those types of moves to motivate the legislature and the governor to make certain actions on our behalf so I get that it might be too much of a overlap of all these different issues that MMA and the mayor's coalition and hypothetically if we were to have a city lobbyist our lobbyist would oversee I think it is still in Bangor's best interest to have at minimum a part-time lobbyist that's my comment over there [12:13] Carolyn Fish: I think first of all we have to identify our key concerns of what we need from Augusta and once we identify them see what coalitions or part-time lobbyists and independent contractor who's a lobbyist. I do know that there's a few locally that do hire themselves out as lobbyists or what other organizations out there that have similar lobbyists that would have an interest in the same subject matter that ends up being on our top priority list. Us for instance housing realtors there's almost 7 000 we each pay substantial dues so we have a pretty good healthy budget for our lobbyist and so anything to do with housing there's a local board we have a legislative committee meeting member that is the liaison for the local board so with housing we might be able to reach out and partner with them to sort of get a lobbyist influence to get our word out with all paying fully for lobbyists but I agree I think we're going to find times we need our we have something so specific and unique that I think we're going to [13:37] Carollynn Lear: Find when I make just a recommendation. So what we do for legal services is we budget x number of dollars a year for legal services, and then when Grace or Dave determine oh there's this employment issue that we just don't have experience with, we go to our employment lawyer. If it's an airport issue, we find the airport lawyer. I think what we could contemplate is doing something similar where we budget on, you know, a small but reasonable amount, and we know it's there so that if we need it we can then identify okay is it this particular lobbyist who's very skilled and knowledgeable about housing issues, or do we need you know this other person who just has great ends with particular committees, but we don't necessarily have to RFP it and hire someone. We can just have the line item there to pay for it if we need it. I [14:42] Joseph Leonard: just want to concur with everything you just said. I actually think that's probably a smart move on our part to actually not have a designated lobbyist but just funding for that, because a lot of lobbyists are also kind of mercenaries in a way. So I think it's a, I don't think it's a bad idea to tackle that, especially if we know that we're not going to meet lobbyist services 24 7 365 days a year [15:15] Angela Walker: Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm wrong, maybe another, sorry if I repeat what you all said because I just pop out, but I yeah I would definitely be on board with a part-time, because I think that like yeah you see all like money going to Portland and Portland getting things you know like to support their you know homeless situation, and I think that we need more of a presence in Augusta. But I do agree with Counselor Fish too that we need to like really like figure out what it is we want them doing first before we decide to bring somebody in. We need to you know have our list of you know priorities for them to tackle. I [16:00] Daniel Carson: think for me I definitely agree with the idea to have a little bit of money put aside when we make the determination that we need that. For me I think a lobbyist is not a substitution for this committee's ability to go out and build the relate. We are the ones that should be building the permanent relationships with Augusta, with communities in the area, not a lobbyist, right? They should know our faces, our names, right, and future counselors. And I don't think there's a substitution. So I think very importantly, where the need arises, it would be great to have the funding to be able to do that when we need it. But otherwise, building relationships, building coalitions, identifying partners. And something that I have found, I've done a lot of this work over the years, you can pay a lot of money for a lobbyist but sometimes it's the personal stories that actually move the people that just the decision makers they really want to see and hear from you know the actual person experiencing the issue or people who are impacted by the question rather than but so I that's right counselor [17:20] Angela Walker: Thank you I don't disagree with you however I think like given that we all are working during the day like it's hard for us to all be in Augusta if there's something that's going to require somebody to be there repeatedly so yeah I agree we need to build those relationships but you know if we need somebody down there you know fighting on a certain bill and having conversations in Augusta it's going to take some time I think that's what we need this person to do absolutely [17:50] Daniel Carson: Absolutely I also will volunteer you know if the committee decides that's what we want to do the council decides I cost you zero dollars I just crunched the numbers in my head so what [18:07] Carollynn Lear: I'll do is I'll bring this up as a item to discuss on Wednesday because it would need to fund it we would need to have that conversation as part of the budget I'll say I think the amount that we would want to budget for it is somewhat nominal in the grand scheme of our budget so I don't think it's something that's going to sway the mill rate but we'll just need to formally vote at that stage to put it in there if that is amenable to the committee the other update I wanted to bring up was the Sort of next priority that I sensed from our last meeting was really getting a handle on what the state plans to do with Dorothea Dix and Jen Gunderman has been working hard to identify a person to come and meet with Jen and I first and I believe that's on my calendar for the next week or two and then once we meet with that person and sort of figure out exactly what's going on and hone in on what we think you folks would be most interested in hearing have that person come and speak to you in an Upcoming legislative committee we'll put on the start of the agenda so that person doesn't have to wait until 9 pm to talk to you and that's the only other update I had at this moment I [19:37] Daniel Carson: Think the only other thing that I have just in the category of other updates is, and I think I did this the last time and I'm not going to read through it, but like this is, there is this list, this really long list developing of things that, you know, come up in meetings we'll shout out or say I think it would be great, maybe if I could put this together in a digestible version that we could start to all look through together and sort of align with the priorities that we voted on as a council to sort of determine what we could focus on because it's very long, so our work won't, we won't ever run out of, but we certainly need to choose more. All right, does anybody have anything else, comments, slide remarks? It is