 This is Think Tech Hawaii, the community matters here. Welcome viewers to ThinkTechHawaii.com. My show is The Will of the People, and I am your host, Martha E. Randolph. Today's show is about how you can actively participate in the Hawaii State Legislature, both the House and Senate, by lobbying for or against the various bills being considered by those bodies. Now, my guest today is Ian Ross, who is a political activist ever since his college days, which I don't think was that long ago actually, and is currently in charge of public policy and advocacy for the local Alzheimer's Association. He is also a member of the Oahu County Committee on Legislative Priorities and is experienced with lobbying for important legislation, including legislation for the ecology. So welcome Ian. Thank you for being my guest today. Thank you for having me, and thank you for not aging me. There you go. No, this is, you know, could be my son. It's terrible. Anyway, perhaps let's start by telling people what the actual responsibilities of the OCCLP, which is the Oahu County Committee on Legislative Priorities, actually is. How do they have, what specific issues will they support, where do those issues come from? And how do they support them? Well, thank you for asking me that question. The OCCLP is a very important committee in the sense that it lets legislators know, specifically in the committee hearings, what the stances of the party is related to the various bills that are before that committee. Melody Doha, our chair, took on a very large responsibility, and the first real draft of this process last year, was she put a support or a pose on every single measure considered by the legislature, which is quite a feat. This year, there are various chairs that oversee different types of committees who will be responsible for drafting and going over that legislation. Now the stances don't come from the individual members or the committee itself, but rather the party's platform. And the party's platform is a long process, but there is essentially committees before state conventions that look at resolutions and look at platforms. Those are distilled and agreed upon by the party at large at the biannual conventions. From there, the party ranks priorities about which bills are the most important to the party. And that's all done by specifically the SEC legislative committees, so the state central committees, legislative committee on priorities, which is then ratified by the party board as a whole in the SEC. And it's very important, ladies and gentlemen, you can find out what the Democratic Party of Hawaii's resolutions have been and what our platforms are, because it is from those two documents, which, as Ian said, are developed and voted on at the state conventions, that these priorities, legislative priorities, are drawn from. They do not necessarily correspond in order with what seems to be the priorities in those documents. And in addition, each county has conventions and each county will determine their own legislative priorities. That's correct. Sometimes these priorities are in complete agreement with the state priorities. Sometimes they differ according to what is important to the county. We try to work together as a Democratic Party. And generally, if there's too much on the plate, you make your choices. You pick your battles, you might say, as we have said many times. But one of the things I was surprised to learn, Ian, is that at least from what Melody told me, we can only, as a committee, if we are acting as a committee member, we can only support those bills which have no conflict with the current Democratic Party of Hawaii resolutions and agendas and policies. And even if they have merit of some kind, and we are not supposed to support a bill which is in conflict with any part of that, that's the kind of thing that can be confusing to people. How would you reconcile it for yourself? Well, what we're doing is we're trying to give a level of follow-up for the party when we talk to legislators. The legislators, by and large, and both the Senate and the House, are Democrats. And they often participate in these conventions and attend them and are part of these processes. But once we decide what our platforms are and resolutions, in the past, they've been – people have been allowed to forget about them until the next convention. This committee is trying to do, and what I believe is being done successfully if we look at what Melody was able to accomplish last year, is remind legislators right at the time of voting what the priorities and what the platform of the party is. That sort of weighing in, I think, adds a lot of value, because Democrats often get quite upset when legislators don't seem to be following the platform. But the party, by and large, hasn't taken as big of a direct role in reminding them as really it should be. And I think that that's one reason that I was drawn to this committee, to be a part of that, to remind people. And when we're doing this, we're working together, and it might not be something where we're personally in agreement all the time. But as members of the Democratic Party, we are in agreement most of the time. And by working together, we're all able to get more of what we all want. Absolutely. In addition, it is definitely true – I don't suppose many people realize that even though we have a Democratic majority in Hawai'i and all houses, all of those Democrats in that majority do not always follow the party guidelines. Now, technically, you would assume they do if they call themselves a Democrat, and they are being consistent with a Democratic process. Their job is to represent the party as the party decides its rules and ethics and principles are at a state convention, because the state convention includes all of us little people representing our communities and councils. But that has not been true in the past, which is what you were referring to. And the fact that now, we've become basically more active. Instead of being passive, the party is doing what it can without running into conflict with these various senators and representatives to say, these are our priorities based on our platform. If you do not support those priorities, just be aware that that's the situation. You're going in opposition to what the members of your party have chosen. There are no punitive actions involved. This is just information. So you're right. It's about time the party started to do this. I agree with you, no? So how did you get involved yourself in processes like this? You're a young man, and I know actually you've been involved with the party for a while. I've heard rumors from other members on various caucuses who speak very highly of you. So what got you involved that made you want to participate? And what was your process? Well, like a lot of people in my generation, I was very inspired by, especially here in Hawaii, the candidacy of then Senator Barack Obama. It was something which got me paying attention far more to politics. And I already grew up in a household where the default channel was one of the news channels, where every ride to school would always be talk radio of some flavor. But I wasn't as engaged or felt like I could be engaged until that candidacy. And it was during this time that I ended up writing after the election to then representative Mazie Hirono and asking what is the qualifications for going to the inauguration. And somehow I was chosen. And a week after turning 18, I got to be at the presidential inauguration in 2009. And from that process on, I kind of looked more for ways to get involved. And it was shortly after that that I actually met then Mayor Bernard Cavallio of Kauai. I was growing up on Kauai at the time. And he was putting together a youth advisory committee. And I just seized on the opportunity. It seemed like such a great serendipity and put together a group and started working on youth related issues. The more number one thing that was the most important to me in my proudest accomplishment on Kauai through that committee was a student ID bus pass for Kauai Community College, where all the students pay in and they're all able to ride the bus. And it was important for sustainability. It was important for making sure students had transportation to school. It was important because the parking law was completely congested at this point. And actually, UH adopted that not so long ago because I got my master's degree there. And that became one of the policies that they instituted. I thought it was terrific. Yeah, they beat us by a year. They beat us by a year. They were on your institution. You pay in 20 bucks and your ID was your bus pass. So I mean, it doesn't even cost you that much if you're not taking the bus. Well, once I had that level of going through all that and working with the Board of Regents and the county council and the mayor's office and the agencies, I was just completely hooked. I took every trip I could to the mainland to do training. I did training I could do here on the state level. I got involved with young Democrats. And at that point, I can't really tell you how I got from one group in the Democratic Party to another. I don't know exactly what Melody told me to be involved, for example, on her committee. But once you're involved, opportunities just begin to arise left and right. People want people to be involved. I think there's a bit of a myth that people are trying to push others out. There are occasions of that in instances in specific circumstances. But largely speaking, if you want to get involved, people want to see involvement. So they'll let you know what committees you could join. People want to talk to you and get involved. Your senators and representatives are relatively easy to get in touch with in a meeting with if you have an earnest community concern. And once I started seeing that process and doing that, I just kind of got me to this show where I'm today. I do want to talk more, especially about the training process you mentioned. But we've got a few minutes before break time. Can you tell people about the councils? The councils, you and I were talking about this, about local government in your community. And it's not an area I'm that acquainted with. So can you talk a little bit about that? How do people get involved in their neighborhood board or neighborhood whatever and really make a difference? Well, thank you for that question. I'm a member, actually, of the Makiki neighborhood board, board 10. Right now, anyone is available and able to apply to be a candidate for the upcoming election. I believe the candidacy deadline is February 15. At that point, there will be an election from April 27 until May 17, where votes can be taken by the community members. They can register on the website for the neighborhood board to be able to vote. They'll get something in the mail that will give them a code and they can vote online. And I think the neighborhood board is the best opening avenue for someone who wants to get involved, because every month, legislators or their office staff will be at these meetings, be able to answer questions for you. You'll be able to, on the record, ask questions of almost every elected, as representatives of the mayor and the governor there. And this gives you a lot of power to effectuate change, to learn about issues, and to get the ball rolling. One important issue to me has been getting a public library at Makiki District Park. And when I ask legislators about where they are on this, these are on the record on TV type of answers. And then we're able to then, as a board, do resolutions and support or opposition to various ideas. In a way, it's sort of like the legislative priorities, except on the board level, which is actually important. You guys may remember, and I know you'll support me on this, Ian, that I mentioned to people in the very first show that you have to join the party officially in order to get the emails which tell you about these various committees and the various meetings and when you are having a precinct election event. And in different neighborhoods and different precincts and different council districts, there is a different degree of advocacy and participation. But if it matters to you to do something, ladies and gentlemen, you have to do it. You have to jump in and participate. It may not seem like much, but remember, the difference between a lobbyist and legislative priorities committee is we are not getting paid. We are supporting principles. Lobbyists are getting paid by specific companies and individuals to promote their own cause, regardless of whether it agrees or disagrees with the will of the people. So we're going to take a short break here. When we come back, we're going to talk about these training sessions and how you can learn more about them, which will teach you an awful lot, if nothing else, about how the legislature is run. So ladies and gentlemen, we'll take a few moments and I'll see you on the other side. This is Martha Randolph. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. 9 times out of 10, it's common. More than 100 years, American Humane Association has been teaching kids to be kind to animals. OK, so we're going to go to the training. Those in our homes and we've got about 12 minutes or so. So I'll pitch the public access room as the world's vanishing creeps. But we can't do it alone. Visit kindness100.org to find ways to teach kids how they can make a more caring, compassionate, and humane world for all of us. Aloha, I'm Tim Apachella. I'm here with Cynthia Sinclair. And this is Trump Week. It's going to appear every Friday at 11 AM between Jay Fidel, Cynthia and myself. We talked about Trump, the activities, and the news stories for that week as it pertains to the Trump administration. We hope you tune in and watch the fun. Aloha. See you then. Hi, everyone. This is Martha Randolph, and the show is the Will of the People. Today, my guest is Ian Ross, who is with me on the committee, the Oahu County Committee for Legislative Priorities, or something of that nature. It's very complicated. But what we are really doing is we are people who are going to help our party and our county make sure that the senators and the representatives are voting for or against bills that work with our priorities and change the ones that don't or try to find something better. Ian, you told me before that you have gone through training. Now, training is a word I've heard a lot these days. I didn't even know there was such a thing. But training is offered by many individual lobby groups. It's also offered by our councils, our various legislative priority bodies, and even simple organizations. I believe you told me that one of the best ones was the Cancer Society. And they can take a long time or a short time or be broken up over time. So I'd like you to talk about that. I'd like you to tell us what you learned when you went to training and also how people can find out more about those sessions. Sure. Well, let's use the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network training as an example. I think this, as I had told you before, is just one of the best legislative trainings available in Hawaii. They go over not just bill tracking and how the committee process works. They also talk about how to do effective testimony, how to weave your personal examples and concerns into hard data to be persuasive. They talk about how following up with emails or in-person meetings can be successful, how to put on press conferences, how to go so far as tracking down legislators when they're in the district and making sure when they're available for questions, say, at a neighborhood board to ask them the questions and concerns there. And when are these tactics appropriate and how are they successful for fostering relationships? They even, at times, have legislators and former legislators come in and do panels to discuss how these tactics work on them and what is effective. Wow. One that I worked with Melody on for the Oahu County Committee on Legislative Priorities. It is a mouthful, isn't it? Yes, it is. Let's say OCCLP from now on. Was working with the public access room. Now, Hawaii is very unique in having a public access room. I think it's. What is a public access room? Explain that in the first place. A public access room is an out-facing agency at the legislature. There's a lot of inward-facing drafting agencies, for example, LRB is a very common one. It gets a reference, the Legislative Reference Bureau. But this one is specifically for the people wanting to talk to legislators. You can go there and use their computers to track bills. You can use a printer. I think you get up to like 15 documents if you want to have something to hand out. So it's a public location in our government for people off the street to access the kind of technology necessary to keep informed on these things. And my understanding is it's one of a kind in the country. It sounds like it. And not only that, they actually will offer training. So if you have a group of people who want to get involved, just like OCCLP, you can ask them to come in for an hour or two and give lessons. What they'll highlight most of all is how to navigate their website, how to track bills, how to submit testimony. Even more nuanced things. One that comes up very often is the so-called gut and replace, where the contents of one bill is swapped out with another or some completely new material. What did you call that again? Gut and replace. Gut and replace. And again, to find that very clearly, it's where you take something out of a current bill and replace it with something else that you find more desirable. So let's say I brought up a Mckiki library before. Let's say if a bill was moving through on that and the title was relating to public libraries. At some point, the contents of that could be replaced with, say, creating a library somewhere else or getting rid of funding for the libraries or for making new positions out of a library that are completely unrelated. As long as the title of the bill is still related to the contents, the contents could completely change. And LRB even gives training, sorry, pardon me, the public access room even provides training on how to track and recognize when that has occurred. OK, so is there anything you can do? And I know this happened recently. We've had a perfect example in the bill that was proposed by the teachers union that was going to allow people to vote on whether they wanted taxes on recreational properties or second properties to go to public funding for schools. And that specific, they had specific information as to the percentage of tax they were talking about and very specifically the value of the properties that would be taxed. That information was removed from the bill by representatives, which allowed it to be attacked as being too vague and unacceptable. And it was, of course, ultimately defeated by a number of commercials and promotions that denigrated it. And because they could, because there was nothing specific in it that had been removed. So is this the kind of thing you have to keep track of? And if something like that has been done, say by a legislator who has his own priorities, can you as a citizen do anything about it? I think that's a really important question. But I first want to draw a distinction between the regular amending process and gut and replace. So gut and replace is one in which essentially the contents of the bill are completely swapped out. Something in which may make a bill more vague or change of percentages around would typically be considered a normal amendment. But I think the answer to your question is the same either way. And that is you really do have to stay on top of amendments that occur. Committee chairs hold a lot of power at the state legislature. They can really affect what the language of a bill is in the most dramatic way. And so talking to them directly about what your priorities are and what you want to see happen is very important if you want to maintain a relationship which can continue to get you type of legislation, the type of language that you would value and want to see. For tracking it, it's the same tracking process that I was talking about. Going to the website, finding the bill, and seeing what the latest culprits are. OK, so what website? We say website. That's because you and I know what we're talking about. But tell people, where would they go online to find this information? And please don't be intimidated when you get there because it's a lot of information. Well, going to capital.hawaii.gov, that would be the main website there. Right at the top right-hand corner, you can click to log in or register an account. This will help you with tracking bills as you can send notifications to your email when bills get to committees or have amendments or are moving along in the process. Further, from there, there's a search bar where you can search a bill by its name or by contents. Let's say that you care, keeping the theme we started, about libraries. You can type in libraries into search bar and see every bill currently being considered by it. Every bill currently being considered that includes the word library in it. Now, this kind of comes together as the first step. Because once you're tracking, you're not really being involved in the process yet. You still have to submit testimony. You still have to consider reaching out to committee chairs and ask them to maybe hold a hearing or support the bill or include amendments that you care about or not include amendments that other people are suggesting that you feel would damage the bill or make it more vague. I think the important thing, and this is ladies and gentlemen, the reason I bring up this topic is because one of the easiest ways to do this if you are just starting, is to work with organizations or committees or caucuses, which have been doing this for a while and cover issues that you are concerned about. As an individual, it may be harder for you to set up a personal meeting, even if for you and five of your colleagues who agree with you, with a specific senator or representative. But if you are part of a committee such as this one, you have experienced people heading it up. They know how to approach an individual who will probably listen to them because they're part of a committee. They know how many people to bring in. They know how to encourage you personally to make a statement and then to read it for you and say, you know what? You need to say more of this and less of this. One of the concerns that Melody has raised before, and she was absolutely right, is too many cooks spoil the broth. If you are given 30 minutes with the chairperson of a committee in the Senate or the House and you have to present your issue or a problem that you have with an issue, you don't want 12 people who have to testify and talk to that man in 30 minutes. You need to present a succinct and consistent message and then have some supporting testimony. And that's probably one of the other things they teach you in a really good training because that's certainly something I learned from going to training. What are some of the other important things for people to learn about? There is submitting testimony in writing, submitting in person, knowing when one is more important than the other or one will work better. What are some of the other things people should know about? Can a person write or propose a bill? Well, that's a really good question. So legislators, members of the chamber in question, the House or the Senate, are the only ones who are able to present a bill. Many legislators have a policy that if something is recommended by one of the constituents, they're happy to introduce it by request. That's a specific term that means there's a little by request line next to the bill and that the legislator is essentially saying they're not personally introducing on their own behalf but on the behalf of another party. Further, you can't really draft the bill as such. If you're a lawyer or someone who's formerly drafted bills, perhaps you can get a lot of the language right. But the only real organizations that can draft bills, all the legislative drafting agencies like SMA, HMSO, I mentioned before, LRB, the Legislative Resource Bureau. Specifically, a legislator has to put in a request to those and only bills drafted by those agencies may be presented as bills. However, like I was mentioning before with talking to legislators, you can ask for what you'd want in the contents of a bill and then go ahead and if they are willing to get it drafted, they can have the language together, potentially have you review it before submitting it as a bill. OK, so you can write down some ideas or principles, things that you want to see done. You can make them as most clear as possible. If you don't have a group or a committee and you can get a hearing with one of your representatives, you can hand it to them and say, this is the issue that matters most to me and my colleagues on this street or in this community. And would you be willing to help us put this in as a bill or present it? Then they can take it to the proper agency. They can have the wording adjusted. And then you have essentially proposed a bill, which then still has a long way to go. But you, without being elected, have actually made it clear what you need to do and what you want to do. I think that's very important. Most people here would never consider that they have the right to propose such a thing. But in the interest of giving your listeners some recommendations on how to start this process, I would definitely say there are three types of legislators you might want to speak with. One would be your own elected, especially if it's a community concern in your district. So that means your state house representative or your senator. The next group of people that you might want to consider is a subject matter chair. So for example, if you're concerned about affordable housing, talking to a housing chair would be a very straightforward way of doing it and asking for them to recommend a bill. The third main possibility is an ideological supporter. So if there's already a crusader on this, someone who's out there and talking about it a lot, they make a lot of sense, especially if they've recommended similar things in the past. That's true. I know that in some ecology issues, we have heard many people talk to us within the little groups that we have at the party. But one of the things that was said was if we can get more people behind this, if we can get more private organizations to support us, it will make a difference. So if you see that there is an issue that matters to you and you think it's of interest not only to yourself but to your community or to any interest group that you may be a part of, get in touch with the individuals or the groups that are presenting and speaking to that cause and lend your support. This is one of the greatest ways for you to participate in the process is find out who's already doing it and jump on their bandwagon because your testimony might be something they desperately need and they don't know who you are. Yes, that's definitely the case. There's a lot of great organizations that work together to amplify the voice of people. I'm not gonna necessarily list anyone's here because I think everyone would be able to look it up online and plus I don't wanna unfairly bias one towards the other. Besides saying of course again that people are very welcome to join the OCCLD. Okay, yeah, please do. By the way, this evening is our final training session at the headquarters of the Democratic Party of Hawaii which is at 627 South Street. Today by the way is the 24th of January, 2019. So if you're watching this on a YouTube channel don't come running down today if it's not the 24th. And the training is from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. From 6 to 8 and you are welcome. Anyone is welcome, interestingly, to almost any meeting of any organization of the Democratic Party of Hawaii but of course you have to know they're happening. The other thing is to tell you please do become familiar if you can with the capital website, the websites that have all these various bills posted and learn how to follow things. If you're not ready to jump in, play with it a little bit. You'll be surprised what you learn and don't be intimidated, power through. And if you have questions, write them down and call your friendly neighborhood OCCLP or the Democratic Party to find out who you can be in touch with and someone will certainly send you a phone number or an email to let you know. And Ian, I'm sorry we are out of time but as usual we could have gone on forever with this. So I wanna thank you for coming today and helping so much. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope you will join the party you support and I hope you will learn as much as you can about participating in the process. Without you, there is no democracy. This is Martha Randolph. The show has been the will of the people. Thank you very much and goody. Their home is coming, you're welcome. Well, I was running over. I was running over.