Transportation Advocacy Day is the day that the Transportation Choices Coalition gathers ordinary people to meet their legislators and demand action on a wide variety of agenda items. In 2012 over 200 people made the trek.
The conventional wisdom is this legislature will be a hostile one, particularly to new taxes. It’s always a heavy lift. But there are a number of worthwhile bills about safety and urban streets that don’t have significant revenue components. Furthermore, there is widespread desire for more highway funding. As the pro-highway voter is often the most virulently anti-tax, any package will probably require pro-transit votes. So there is some leverage.
Anyhow, you can register for this year’s advocacy day, Tuesday, Feb. 12th, here.
I went last year and found it a waste of time. Each of my legislators had the same response: “I agree with you on everything, but since I’m not on the Transportation Committee, I’ll likely never have an opportunity to vote on these bills.”
I take that back. Mary-Lou Dickerson was more like “Well the state is slashing social service funding and people are dying, so you transportation people can f off.” Incredibly condescending. I was overjoyed when she announced her retirement.
I’ve gone a couple of times, and the utility isn’t so much in “how do I get what I want” as it is in understanding exactly *how* legislators respond, and being able to speak to what you need in terms of how it will help them. Some legislators care about really specific things, but if you talk about how land use helps them have an easier fight, they’ll be interested in that. Some of them want to better understand what’s happening in the transportation committee, or know how to respond to constituents who have specific concerns in their district. I’ve found it’s most useful to ask them what kind of transportation issues *they* care about, and try to push their frame a bit to show them how transit and better land use helps.
From my experience last year, it’s lucky if all the folks from your district, as a group, get 5 minutes of your legislator’s time. It’s not worth taking a vacation day to preach ineffectually to the choir.
On the other hand, Gael Tarleton has been appointed to the House Transportation Committee. So maybe it wouldn’t be wasted effort for residents of the 36th this time around.
Gee, I hope they’re not too hostile to your gas tax request, Martin.
I will, sadly, be out of town on that day.
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I went last year… And while I found it interesting and learned a bit more about my government. I didn’t think I ended up doing much. I’m in the 37th and all of my representatives are very pro-transit. But I’m with Matt, I can’t it worth taking a vacation day.
One thing I thought was a bit fail was not telling people what bills we were advocating for before we got there. I for one would’ve liked to have read up before getting to Olympia in the morning.