Legislative news at the National and State levels, and specific news from our State Lobbyist and Legislative Trustee, plus Legislative links.

Organizational Commitment – does your Chapter have it? I hope so - our legislative agenda is depending on it. There are indications we need a tune up. For some, perhaps this is a repeat, but before you dismiss me as a broken record, here I am asking for you to take a walk with me anyway. Read this anyway and as we take this walk together, you ask yourself whether any or all of this is applicable to you or to your Chapter.

It is true that some of the things we do are repetitive by nature. We are a grassroots political organization and if we are doing our job, we always have new people. The Chapter newsletter is a great place to have a solid core of information we need to supply to every member. In addition to the fact that a new member’s initial response to the first newsletter you send to their mailbox may give them the initial impression as to how to treat all your Chapter newsletters that follow, most Chapters also circulate newsletters to shops and other places where motorcycling-minded folks congregate. You can imagine how important it might be to some of those folks to pick up your newsletter to read what we are all about, as well as those things your Chapter is working on or towards in regard to our legislative agenda.

Organizational Commitment - As we determine the course of our legislative agenda, it is important to realize that if your Chapter does not actively engage itself in support of our agenda, we are not going to be poised to do the things we need to do. We have to have commitment to our agenda to achieve our goals. Our strength as a grassroots legislative organization lies in working together towards the same common goals.

Sometimes lack of organizational commitment equals lack of leadership. That can come from many places. If I am not supplying enough information about our legislative agenda and what your Chapter needs to do, then shame on me. If your Chapter has information to act upon and for whatever reason, chooses not to, then shame on you. In either case, the entire organization loses. The activity needed at your Chapter level may be the rung on the ladder we needed to get us up to the next step in terms of getting some new legislation introduced or successfully protecting some we have already passed.

Why is it important there be organizational commitment from your Chapter? Your Chapter and your Chapter members are our grassroots contacts and link to the elected officials who represent constituents from your area. Your Chapter’s elected officials who cast votes in the Florida legislature. Florida is a large and populous state. There are 120 votes in the Florida House and we need 61 of those votes to pass a bill (or to keep one we do not like from being passed!). The Florida Senate consists of another 40 votes, and we need 21 of those votes to keep our positions safe. Experience tells us that we need more than a simple majority of 61 votes in the House or 21 in the Senate because sometimes people change their minds. We have seen people flip-flop at the last minute and vote against us. We have heard that someone actually hit the voting button for someone else. We have had key votes not be present to cast their vote because they were sick or detained elsewhere. Yes, we have even lost a vote because someone was in the bathroom. Please note that important votes take place in committee meetings as well. Our bills are before much smaller groups of people in committee and we must have the votes to get a bill through a committee. Sometimes we also need the votes to kill a bill in committee. If we need to kill a bill, we need to try to do so in committee because we can do it without needing 61 or 21 votes.

Sometimes lack of organizational commitment is about simply not knowing how to get started. If you find yourself in that position, please call me. I am looking for some folks to help me out so we can adequately and timely respond to requests to actually come to help. I have also encountered a lack of organizational commitment because working towards our agenda may not be a popular thing to do. This is an important hump to get over if this is what is holding your Chapter back. This is a legislative grassroots organization and what it is all about. Accepting a position inside our organization is not really about any form of popularity contest, it is about helping us work towards our agenda.

Help dispel notions that working towards our legislative agenda is a drag. I can tell you that is not true and some of the very best of times can be experienced doing exactly that. Working together to accomplish our goals and can be very rewarding and this is who we are and what we do.

Know that coordinating volunteer efforts can be a difficult adventure, regardless of what organization you are talking about. It is important to remember that everyone needs treated with courtesy and respect and part of being a truly successful leader is being an example for others to follow. If you are not where you want to be, or your Chapter is not where you want it to be, do not think that efforts today will bring forth spectacular and overnight results tomorrow. It does not work that way. You have to live that way and then things will change and simply become that way.

Sometimes good intentions simply fall off track. Bike Nights are great places to meet people, spread the ABATE word, and find new members. When we actively engage Chapter time and resources into Bike Night activity that does not support our legislative agenda as well, then we have lost our way. These are great places to spread the word and increase the circle of legislative activism. If we fail to capitalize on that, then it becomes similar to the commercialization of Christmas - we have lost the reason for the season.

Supporting our agenda can come in many different flavors. It is important to not lose sight of this, particularly when coordinating efforts in a volunteer organization. Understand you cannot make someone do anything. No matter how important it is to you, understand that it will not always become automatically important to others. Just because you explain why it is important, understand that it still won’t automatically become important to everyone else.

It is also important to reach out. Reach out to all members to help get them committed to our agenda. This must be done at meetings, but do not forget to reach out to others in the community, including the members you have who do not attend meetings. If you give them the information to help support your agenda, you can get support from someone who never attends a meeting. I know some people unable to attend meeting because of their work. If someone is working six days a week and has a single day to address family and other issues, do not be surprised that you will rarely see them at a meeting or event. Try an approach other than scolding members for not being at meetings or events. I saw a letter from a recent President that was a good example of this. He said something like, ‘if you did not make it to our run last week, you missed out on a great time, I hope you sent someone in your place’. There are members who cannot support meetings and functions, so don’t forget about them or automatically alienate them. Acknowledge their existence. Realize for some folks, there are legitimate reasons. Use your newsletter and ask them to share about the event and to encourage others to attend. Ask them to sign up a new member. Share the information necessary for them to participate in our legislative agenda. Ask them to write a letter or make a call. Ask for understanding about the business of doing business, mailing newsletters, etc. Members with the means can still help support the Chapter if they cannot attend meeting, but they need to know the Chapter involves itself in fundraising to meet it own needs and support our legislative agenda. Ask them to contribute if they can.

Our Legislative Agenda

-Making sure Chapter Phone Trees are updated and in place. -Establishing and Maintaining an Effective Rapport with your Chapters elected officials in the Fla Legislature and US Congress. -Collecting the Legislative Survey information recently requested. -Organizing your Chapter membership for a strong showing for the April Tallahassee run. -Signing up new members to help increase our legislative power base. Continually strive to make sure your members are registered to vote.

Our number one goal at this time is to protect ourselves. We need to be prepared to repel attacks on our Freedom of Choice and we continue to hear about other bills threatening to surface in the upcoming legislation.

Sometimes we will be called on to defend ourselves at the very last minute. Not all legislation is passed from a bill that made it through several committees, giving us ample time to make contacts. Sometimes, unpleasant provisions are added to existing bills and we need to be able to generate immediate action. Doc gave a perfect example at the December meeting, citing how activation of our Statewide Phone Tree helped him prevent the dismantling of Florida Rider Training, but leaving motorcyclists continuing to pay the additional money for the license tag.

PHONE TREES – Your Chapter must have an active and updated Phone Tree. We must be prepared to be able to act on information and activate statewide or area phone trees to support our lobbying activities.

The last time I was involved in coordinating our statewide emergency communications, we did not have as many members with email. We want to add email addresses to our phone tree info, but as an enhancement for providing necessary detail rather than actually replacing a phone call when needed.

Problems – Past issues have pointed out that improper use of a Phone Tree can cause it to unravel. Please do not use a phone tree as a replacement for planning and involving your membership through your newsletter. Caution about applying excessive demands on those agreeing to activate branches of your tree and call a list of people. Casual use is likely to generate some apathetic reactions and loss in participation if called upon regularly for other things, particularly when used as a poor planning band-aid.

Things we have learned
-Giving people particular, targeted lists of local calls to make is important, particularly if your Chapter is spread across dialing exchanges that result in toll charges for regular calls. -Ten phone calls can be a lot, involve more folks to keep from asking someone to call more than a list of ten. -Have a main contact for the list of ten calls, but use someone on the list as a backup in case that person is out of town. -Excel is a great tool for being able to easily assign and reassign people to make the calls and organize a phone tree. -Not maintaining the Phone Tree as a separate function or list, but actually being part of the membership list is very helpful. -Having the Chapter Phone actually be part of the membership requires less effort and upkeep, makes it easier, helps keep your Phone Tree up-to-date as it will be simultaneously update while the membership list is being updated.

ESTABLISHING and MAINTAINING an EFFECTIVE RAPPORT with your Chapter’s elected officials is an absolute must as part of a grassroots political organization. This is the very essence of our being. It is important to visit our legislators sometimes when we are not asking for anything. We must absolutely maintain a courteous and professional communication even with those offices that are not with us on certain issues. This means making sure some members show up when there are town meetings or other opportunities when our legislators make themselves available to the public. It is important that no such meeting occur in your community where there is not some leather and motorcycles present and accounted for. This visibility establishes our grassroots presence and it is important that this presence is felt. We have won over some folks simply through polite and honest discourse and perseverance. As the elections in November approach, building our rapport will include offering to assist in some campaign efforts. Putting a word in now with those who will be running for office is helpful. Can we help with putting out some campaign signs, making some calls, helping prepare some mailings, etc? This is also time to collect information in regard t the questions on our LEGISLATIVE SURVEYS.

GET MEMBERS TO TALLAHASSEEFOR OUR APRIL RUN to visit our legislators. Again this is who we are and what we do. Always important, but this year extremely so, please start making plans now to get as many members as possible to ride with us. We need a record turn out when we ride to the Capitol in April 2006.

SIGNING UP NEW MEMBERS- We need to increase our numbers and add a substantially larger number of Freedom Fighters to our ranks. We must capitalize on the awareness we will begin to enjoy more and more of through the end of June via billboards and PSA’s. We need Chapters to plan for increasing membership.

Please help make sure your Chapter will being doing its part to insure our SMRO will be in the position to assert our legislative grassroots power when needed……JEB