 Good afternoon, and welcome to the third and final pre-conference workshop of Pass Forward 2022. I am Shaw Sprague, Vice President of Government Relations for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and I'm pleased to welcome everybody to today's workshop, Federal Advocacy, Positioning Historic Preservation for the Future. Before we get started, I wanted to mention a few logistical notes about our presentation today. The session is being recorded and will be available following the session. We're asking participants to adhere to the Pass Forward Code of Conduct, which can be found in the conference platform on the menu to the left. If you're seeking continuing education credits, please fill out the attendance form to the bottom of the session page for AIA credits and self-report for AICP credits. And finally, questions can be submitted through the chat function and will be addressed during specified Q&A sections of the presentation. And I'll note that the full speaker bios can be found on the conference platform. Next slide, please. So as a roadmap for today, we'll hear our partners from Scenic America who have a track record of successful advocacy campaigns and legislative wins that preserve and enhance the visual character and scenic beauty of the nation. After that, you'll have an opportunity to ask a few questions. And then following that, we'll hear from national trust staff previewing legislative asks as part of the Pass Forward Federal Advocacy opportunity. We're happy also to have James Green from Representative Fernandez's office join us to discuss their initiatives to support the Historic Preservation Fund. And then finally, we're going to close with another section of Q&A. So get those questions ready. Next slide, please. To begin, what we thought we'd do is start with a few questions for the audience, a little interactive part of the workshop to gauge everyone's experience conducting federal advocacy. One of the objectives of this session is to ensure that everybody understands the importance of advocacy, but sustained advocacy as well. And we want to ensure that you're feeling confident about making these calls and outreach to Capitol Hill and interacting with your elected officials. So bear with us. This is one of the first attempts to activate the polls, but they should appear in the poll tab of your chat menu. Take a look for that. There are three questions for you to answer. And I'm going to give everyone just a few moments to make their selections and then we'll go over some of those results. But take a moment now and answer those three questions. We'll give everybody about a minute and we'll come back and see how we're doing. Really, the point here is seeing what people's experience is like in the advocacy space and how frequently that interaction is occurring, which will help all of our panelists and experts advise on best ways and approaches to interact with Congress. We're gonna give it just a few more seconds here. Okay, so let's go to our first question. Would you say you have an established relationship with your federal elected officials? And drumroll please. Yes, answer is 37 percent. So we're getting close to half of everybody has a relationship with federal officials. That's pretty good. That interaction is key and to have those relationships is really such an important part of effective advocacy. So for our next question, how frequently do you meet with your federal elected officials? Let's see. Once a year, 81 percent. Twice a year, 8.7 percent. Three times a year, 8.7 percent. So isn't that interesting? So most, the overwhelming majority of folks are connecting once a year with advocates. And from that, I think we can glean that. Hearing from once a year, this isn't, this is more like calling grandma not elected officials. We do want to see more interaction with elected officials. And so more than once a year, it's good to check in. So we're gonna cover some of that in today's webinar. And let's see, final question. Have you hosted or participated in an in-district meeting with federal elected officials? Yes, 12.5 percent. So these in-district meetings are a key way to demonstrate to elected officials the importance of the policies we're pursuing, whether that be funding or tax incentives or legislation to establish protections for important historic places. If a picture is a thousand words, actually visiting a place is worth even more. It really goes a long way. So glad to see a number of folks having done that. It is a lot of work. So we appreciate those 13 percent of the group who have conducted those meetings. Next slide, please. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Mark Falzon. Mark has been president of Scenic America since April 2017. And since his arrival, Scenic America has increased its investment in lobbying, research, communications, and additional tools to further the organization's mission. And as a result, Scenic America has achieved many legislative wins. Prior to his arrival at Scenic America, Mark also served as a five-term elected member of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. As a member of the National Conference of State Legislatures, he was also twice elected to that executive committee. So we're lucky to have Mark here today to share his experience of running Scenic America. And I'll turn it over to you, Mark. Can you provide us with an overview of some of the important federal advocacy and what constitutes a successful advocacy campaign? Great. Thanks so much, Shaw. And let me just first, Shaw, start with just a little bit of background about Scenic America. Scenic America is the only national nonprofit that's specifically focused in enhancing the visual character of our country. And we have over 40 state and local chapters and affiliates and hundreds of volunteers and thousands of supporters across the country. And so we are excited to be with you here today, Shaw and your team at the National Trust. We have a lot going on. We both think that historic preservation is important, for example. And from the Scenic America standpoint, we view that as critical to Scenic beauty. So we'll go to the next slide here. So as we are key issues at Scenic America, you'll see that we have five of them preserving and enhancing community character, which by the way, again, historic preservation would be sort of under that category, as well as good promoting best practices and placemaking like that. We also care about honoring our parks and open spaces, including the gateway communities that host them. And so that's a lot of work we do in that area is with gateway communities. We also celebrate America's Scenic Byways, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that today and some of our legislative successes and how we did that today. Also, undergrounding utility infrastructure is a big priority for us. We add three victories in that in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the bipartisan infrastructure law, whatever your term of art is for the law that passed about a year ago in Congress, the infrastructure bill. And finally, we promote beautiful highways and we do that in a number of ways, but one of them is fighting against billboard blight, trying to reduce the amount of billboards in our streets. And also, we're very pro-tree. So we'd rather see trees than billboards. So we'll go to the next slide. So our advocacy wins include, and I tried to touch base on some of these, we had the Reviving America, the Reviving the National Scenic Byways Program, it was called the Reviving America's Scenic Byways Act of 2019. Scenic America was founded in 1982. And we hadn't had a win that we authored in Congress. We had one had some defensive wins where we beat back, you know, some bad bills, but we had never had a proactive win where something that we authored became law. And the Reviving America Scenic Byways Act of 2019 was the first time that we were able to do that. I became the CEO of Scenic America in 2017. And brought some, you know, expertise to the organization. And so we were able to do this. And so I want to, the reason I mentioned this is, you know, I want to be clear that, you know, having a win, even in a jurisdiction like Congress, is doable. Within a few years of starting, really plotting out the steps that are needed in a systematic way. And, you know, success is very, very achievable. If it can be done in Congress within, you know, a couple of years, then it could certainly be done anywhere. Because Congress is not the easiest place to get bills passed. I used to lecture in college. I used to be an adjunct professor. And one of the things I would always say is, you know, American democracy is actually not built, not built to pass laws. It's built to block legislation. So, and that's having two houses of Congress and a separately elected president, all of whom may be in different parties. That's where that comes from. So that was our first key win and really got us on the map in Congress and led to a lot of momentum for us. We followed with securing funding for the National Scenic Byways Program. So, whereas the first bullet was more about reactivating the program and directing federal highways to do a new round of designations of Scenic Byways. On the other hand, you know, this is actually bringing funds to the Scenic Byways Program. So, we got a total of $26 million, excuse me, $22 million that is in there, which isn't big money compared to other things in Congress. But for this program, it was a good starting number, particularly since there had been no funding for the program in 10 years. And as Shaw or anybody else in advocacy will tell you, it's much, much harder to go from zero dollars to anything more than zero than it is, you know, to go greater than zero to another number greater than that number. What I'm trying to say is it's a lot harder to go from nothing than it is from something. And so, that's really was a great victory for us as well. And and we're going to talk a little bit about how we, you know, but I'd also mention, I briefly mentioned the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. And so, in there, we had three victories for utility undergrounding and one for gateway communities that are gateway communities to parks and open space. So, I'll mention first the Gateway Communities Victory, the Federal Lands Access Program, or FLAP. If, you know, I'm in Washington, D.C., and we love our acronyms. And so, the Federal Lands Access Program becomes FLAP. And that's a program that is really geared toward gateway community. It basically is a program that funds, funds, excuse me, roadways that are lead to national parks or lead to federal lands. It doesn't have to be a national park. Lead to federal lands. Not the ones that are in the federal lands. That's actually a different funding program called the Federal Lands Transfer Program. But the Federal Lands Access Program are the roads that lead to these federal lands. And so, that's a really good definition of gateway communities. And we're able to help increase the funds for that and also had some definition changes that way they could be, the funds could be used for more things such as landscaping and removal of, and so we're thrilled with our victory there. Also, for utility undergrounding, we had three victories. One that was, had to do with five billion dollars, a five billion dollar pot of money for grid resiliency of which a utility undergrounding is one of the eligible expenses for that. And we expect that that's going to be a major expense that is paid out of that. A second win that we had was, had to do with the 32 billion dollar national highway performance program. And for that program, that is sort of the program that funds most of our highways. And so it's a big pot of money, 32 billion dollars a year. And I don't expect, undergrounding is now an eligible expense within that program. Now, I don't expect to go toward undergrounding, but if a street, if a road or highway is now being repaired and the overhead wires are there, you can actually now put them underground and use those federal dollars for that. So that was a big win as well. And then third, another great win we had for utility undergrounding, had to do with FEMA. And when there's a, you know, federal, federally declared emergency and FEMA has to come into an area and help with disaster relief. You know, it's generally the case that FEMA will only provide federal funds to build things as they were and with no enhancements. I thought that was a little bit foolish when it came to overhead wires because in many cases, you know, there's a lot of hurricanes that are blowing down the same overhead wires over and over again. And so we thought, you know, it really made sense to rebuild underground and have federal funds be used for that. And that is indeed now a FEMA funds. And so we got what's called the Stafford Act, which is a, which is what governs FEMA amended. So that way now FEMA federal funds can be used to take those overhead wires that were downed during a disaster and put them underground. And we'll go. So let's talk about what are the basics for advocacy. So, you know, I found it interesting that, you know, well, let me start with messaging. First, we want to message very clear, very consistent, timely and relevant. So, and let me walk through each one of those four points. You know, when you're crafting a message, and this is true in any communications endeavor, whether it's trying to lobby for a bill in Congress or trying to position a program in a certain way to the general public. So, you know, what you want to do is you want to craft your message, your messenger and the method of delivery or the channel. You want to tailor all that to the audience. So whenever we're thinking of messaging or in general, communications in general, we want to think of the audience first. And in this case, our audience is Congress. And so we want to think terms of what would a member of Congress want to hear. So when it comes to scenic byways, we could talk about how scenic byways, the country more beautiful or the historical relevance of them or the cultural relevance of them. And I say that because scenic byways are just beautiful places like Highway of Legends in Colorado. Or some are historically based such as the Salmone and Montgomery in Alabama, you know, obviously has important civil rights bent to it. But those are not, those are not none of those are the messages that we give to Congress. Because if we're thinking of what is it that they generally care about? And so our experience tells us that Congress when it comes to scenic byways, the best argument to present is economic development. Because scenic byways do indeed bring great economic development to the areas in which they're in. Now part of that is because of tourism. There are a lot of country that want to just ride the scenic byways and they will spend money along them. And they will also connect, you know, urban and suburban areas to rural areas. And so you're sort of bringing this economic development and spending money to places that wouldn't necessarily normally get it. And that is a message that works with Congress. And so when you're thinking of your messaging, you know, you want to first think about like what should the message be? And in this case, you know, you always want to tailor it to your audience. In this case, the audience is Congress. Once you have that message, you want to make sure it's simple and clear, right? And and and be repetitive. So when we say consistent, you want to repeat it over and in some cases, you're going to think, well, they've already heard that. I mean, they need to hear a different argument. No, no, mess consistency and messaging is really important. So that way, the message sinks in, you know, saying it once or twice or three times is not enough. Usually it needs to be seven or eight or nine times until somebody sort of absorbs the message. That's really important. Time important. And in terms of making sure that, you know, you are reaching out at the key times. And so, you know, if you know there is a certain schedule for like a bill, you know, passing like an appropriations bill, for instance, there are certain key moments where you need to be advocating to the right people, whether it's a member of Congress or committee staff or whatever it is. And so doing your research to understand the process is critical for that timeliness. And then relevance. Obviously, this has to do with the message itself is making sure that to the audience again, I can't stress that enough. Allies and partnerships are critical. You know, you can do things alone, but you're stronger if you do things together, right? Because if a member of Congress sees, oh, wow, there's a whole group of people supporting this, that's going to get their attention. Most importantly, you want to make sure you don't have, you know, two different groups saying different things, because that is where gridlock sets in. Because if a member of Congress is hearing two different messages or two different priorities from what they consider two like-minded groups, then in their mind, all they're going to hear is that, and they're going to say, you know what, it might be safer to do nothing. So that's critical as well. Relationships with public officials are critical. Now, interestingly, we saw the poll that said, I believe it said 37% of people feel though they have an established relationship with your federal officials. So that's 63%, then do not feel that way. And I would also mention how that aligns with, you know, 81% of people visit with their federal elected officials' offices once a year. Well, what does that tell us? It tells us that you understand, which is once a year is probably not enough to establish a relationship, right? And we learned that from the poll, and it is indeed true. You want to have multiple, you know, meetings with elected officials, with your public officials, per year, a mix of, you know, in these days, Zoom teams or, you know, virtual is good. You know, an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C. doesn't hurt, and certainly an in-district meeting doesn't hurt either. And so, you know, getting that mix together, depending on, you know, the resources that you have and what you're able to do, but repetition is really important. And so that's really critical in terms of working with your public officials. Repetition, meeting with them often, and, you know, not just the district office, but the D.C. office as well. And oftentimes, if you're working with a national partner, such as National Trust, Shaw and his team can help coordinate those if there is an overarching National Trust priority that you're working on. So that's great. That's what we do at Scenic America as well. The ability to work grassroots to grass tops is also critical. So, you know, you know, grassroots advocacy, a lot of that is digital these days. Some of it is in-person. But also, the grass tops folks are going to be sort of your VIPs, where maybe they know the elected official personally, or they have a relationship with them. And, you know, or maybe they're a local elected official themselves, and so they're going to get the attention of the federal elected official. You know, so that's the difference between working grassroots and grass tops. Ideally, you do both because, again, it's a mix of all these different pieces of advocacy that really make this successful. So with that said, I'll go to the next slide. And I'm going to just briefly touch here on the National Scenic Buyways program. But I'm going to go through this slide pretty quickly because I want to make sure that we stay on track. And, you know, Buyways program already mentioned that it recognizes roads that demonstrate one or more intrinsic qualities. What I didn't mention is what are all of those qualities. So I mentioned that some are scenic, some are historic, some are cultural. There's also natural, archaeological and recreational. So you can be designated for a variety of criteria. And you need to demonstrate at least one of the intrinsic criteria. And so not all scenic buyways are strictly scenic. You know, they could have one of these other criteria as well. You can see the other information on the slide here. But the big takeaway is that there's over 1200 in the country. And I already mentioned that funding had lapsed 10 years ago. And there were no new designations until Scenic America came along and fixed both of these issues in the last bullet. We'll go to the next slide. And so this tied into our organizational priorities, caught members of caught the interest of members of Congress in both parties. A critical thing is we always tried to do things in a bipartisan way when possible. So we had both Republican and Democratic champions in both the House and Senate, bipartisan, bicameral. And so that's really critical. And so we had a strong public appeal to help fuel grassroots petitions and targeted actions. So that's our grassroots piece. We also had certain key supporters of Scenic America meet with their members of Congress from a grass tops perspective. And so that's critical as well. And this led to culmination of the passing of the reviving of America 2019. And so that was a new legislation that called for buyways nominations. But like I said, didn't have funding, but we were able to get funding in a later piece. And that was also part of a grand strategy of reviving the program first getting an active and then later asking for money on purpose. That was a plotted out strategy. We'll go to the next slide. So you can see here that this is how we were able to take the next steps that we did get 22 million in funding. We're looking for another 23. And so this was really all part of that grand strategy. We can go to the next slide. And there are external positive externalities to advocacy. There are lots of byproducts, good byproducts. We saw a fourfold increase in website traffic after the newest designations were announced. We were actually cited all over the, we had a lot of press coverage and major national outlets because of the new designations. And we actually received two awards for our buyways work and one for advocacy from the American Society of Association Executives. So to sort of win awards for our work was also exciting for us. Go to the next slide. And so, you know, one of the things I'd like to ask you to do today is take action right now. So you can be a part of this right now. So not often do people actually encourage you to leave your screen for a moment, but if you go to www.senic.org slash FY23 buyways, then you'll be able to advocate for more funding for buyways as well right now. So I'd ask you to just take 10 seconds. That's all it takes. Go to that website www.senic.org slash FY23 buyways. And right now you could take action on that. And I'd ask somebody to post that a link in the chat as well to make this a little easier for folks. And so that way we can move off this slide as well. But take a moment, get that done now, and you'll be helping to advocate. So you'll be a part of the grassroots to advocate for scenic buyways. And you know, that is at a basic level, how we do this and how we get this done and also how you can be a part of the grassroots just that easily. We try to miss that way they can advocate for us. Again, www.senic.org slash FY23 buyways. And we can go to the next slide. So I want to thank you for, you know, your attention here. And in a nutshell, that's what Scenic America has been doing here. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Well, Mark, thanks so much. That's a great overview of the advocacy basics. You would certainly know well with your experience in state legislature and a wonderful recap of the work of Scenic America. We do have a good question that does combine the National Historic Preservation Act into it. And that question mark is will the availability of federal funding for the undergrounding of wires increase the amount of section 106 reviews that power companies will undergo? And have you experienced those companies not wanting to go along with the undergrounding because of that review process? I'm not sure how closely you are connected to that aspect of the work, but an interesting question. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, so do I think it will increase the number of 106 reviews? I suppose, yes, you know, that will be something that will probably become come of this simply because if any of these, you know, wires are in that are proposed to be undergrounded are in places that are subject to 106, then sure, they would obviously then, you know, have to go certain that that number is going to be greater than zero, right? And so the answer is the answer would have to be then, yes, that would increase the amount of 106 reviews. And do I think that a new federal nexus will decrease the number of companies that want to do it as a result? You know, I actually don't think so. And the reason is because this is money that the companies would be getting. And so that's the federal incentive, right? You know, there is it is a match, you know, so it's not completely free money. But, you know, if you are, you know, for example, for Florida power and light, and you already have an undergrounding, you know, program going in the state of Florida, because you had prior done, you know, five years of what they called hardening, which was basically instead of wood poles, concrete poles, and you found out that hurricanes don't care if it's wood or concrete, they're still going to blow it down. You know, then then if you're a utility provider like Florida power and light that came across this lesson actually absorbed the lesson and, you know, and and did something with it, then then what we were able to do is that and, you know, they were they're able to take this money, put up the money that they're already using the match and do it. So I don't think it's going to discourage. I think we'll encourage undergrounding. Good point. Thank you, Mark. We do have another question about funding for scenic byways before your tenure there in the surface transportation bills prior to that. Maybe you can speak to just have programs with that. Yeah, I'm not a clear advocate on the hill. I can go dark for a while. Yeah, that's that's so this is shy. You just nailed it on the head. So, you know, so I was hired by scenic America in 2017. Right. And so during the intervening time, scenic America was not active on Capitol Hill. We actually had no staff even living in Washington, D.C. at the time. And so when you sort of ignore policymakers, you know, and you're not sort of doing that constipacy and cons relationship building, then your priorities are not going to do well. You know, this is not something that you can let lie fallow. Because if you do, then you will lose funding, which is exactly what happened, Carl. You know, whether it be scenic America or other scenic byways advocates out there, we were not doing our job. You know, and the board of scenic America, when I was hired, made it clear that this was a priority for the organization. They knew that they needed to hire somebody in Washington, D.C. to run the organization because we are sort of advocacy focused organization. When I got to scenic America, we had no advocacy program whatsoever. So we literally built this from scratch, you know, starting in, you know, late April 2017 was my higher date, right. And, you know, took a few months just to sort of learn where the bathroom is, etc. And went about writing and creating a congressional agenda, the legislation that goes along with that, and starting to build the relationships and just literally pounding the halls of Congress, like just, you know, making relationships. It's really just that, you know, type of dogged determined bind with a good solid strategy. So, you know, so that's where it comes from. Thanks, Carl. Mark, well, thanks. I think that's those are the questions we've seen come through, but if you wouldn't mind sticking around through the end of the the workshop for the remaining Q&A, your great resource for questions on this. And thank you for emphasizing the importance of repeating that message. And, you know, why having a relationship where you're communicating several times a year is so important. I think that I think that was really helpful for folks to hear. Thanks, Sean. We love working with the National Trust. So we're glad to be here as partners. You bet. Great. So now we're going to switch over to some of the legislative priorities that we are outlining for advocacy that's coming up. Associated Advocacy during the Pass Forward Conference. So the government relations team at the Trust has worked with our preservation partners from nearly every state to serve as advocacy captains and lead virtual Hill meetings during the conference week. And for the folks that are on today that have not gone into the Pass Forward Registration Portal and clicked on update options, please do that and add advocacy as part of your registration. We'd love to have you join and, you know, you should feel free to join just to see how these meetings go, familiarize yourself with it or to come on and help us make the case for some of these important programs. So we currently have over 150 advocates as part of the Pass Forward registration process, but we'd love to have you along as well. You do have until next couple days to register to modify those options. And I believe you will still have that ability even during the conference. But if you can get it done in the next couple of days, that's great. And I think we do want to note that these visits are occurring at a critical time in the legislative cycle. And we are a few weeks away from the midterm elections, as you know. And following that, Congress will enter into what's referred to as its lame duck session. And that's where Congress will continue to meet if it's so inclined until the next Congress, the new Congress is sworn in in January. And it's often Congress, you often see Congress legislative activity pick up when there is a bit of a backstop. When there's a deadline, that's when you see congressional action. So we've got a deadline, but will we see legislative action? It depends a little bit on the outcome of the election. Will the chambers in Congress flip? How much will they flip? And all those numbers and calculations will factor into how active a lame duck session may be. But we're hopeful that that there will still be a number of preservation bills that could move during the lame duck. And so we want to make sure advocates are prepared to deliver the message and that we're poised to take advantage of an active lame duck session. So to prepare advocates for upcoming Hill meetings, we've developed three one-pagers that touch on key preservation issues. This includes the historic tax credit, public lands legislation and the historic preservation fund. And you can find these on the session page under attachments. And now we're going to take this opportunity to preview these legislative asks that are in those documents. And I'm going to just begin by diving into the historic tax credit. And perhaps as as many of you know, the historic tax credit is the most significant investment the federal government makes to historic preservation. We've seen more than 47,000 buildings preserved and rehabilitated using historic tax credit. And for the folks that aren't as familiar with this credit, it is a 20% income tax credit that can be applied to qualified rehabilitation expenses for income producing historic buildings. During the 2017 tax reform bill, the credit went from a so-called one-year credit, meaning you could take it in a single year to spread out over five years, which did reduce some of the value of the credit. And so since 2017, the historic tax credit has been a slightly weakened credit, just slightly less of an incentive since those changes. And so part of our advocacy is to help enhance the value of the credit and modernize it. It hasn't been adjusted in or strengthened since over the last more than 40 years. And so we are strongly advocating for the passage of the historic tax credit growth and opportunity act. This was introduced in the House as HR 2294 and in the Senate as 2266. And it would do just that. It would modernize the credit in several ways, but it would essentially address, it would improve the value of the credit from an investment standpoint. It would also improve access to the credit, both for Main Street communities, rural communities, urban communities as well. And one of the key provisions there is that it would better align historic tax credit with the affordable housing credit, the low-income housing tax credit. And these points are spelled out in both the one-pagers, but also the supplemental talking points that we'll provide as part of the advocacy and outreach. So we do have the technical information available to you, but essentially there are these two real estate tax incentives that work well together and they could work even better together if some of these changes in the HTC GO Bill were passed, specifically the basis adjustment provision, which is how things work in affordable housing. And if you have the same approach in historic, you'll have more developers that are looking to combine those credits. And that's one key objective of the legislation. The other part of the credit is that it would try to help improve access to the credit for those smaller historic tax credit projects. And it would do that by making the substantial rehabilitation test easier to satisfy. It would do that by lowering the amount that you need to invest in a property to qualify for the credit from 100% of a building's basis to 50%. So it just makes qualifying for the credit that much easier. And then there's also a provision that would increase the value of the credit from a 20% credit to a 30% credit for deals that are less than 2.5 million in QREs. So that is targeting those smaller communities where it's often more difficult to drive that investment. But once you do, it is a five to one return. So there are a number of really strong economic arguments to make to Congress about the impact of the credit. It's job creating potential. There are more than 3 million jobs created as a result of the program since it's an inception. And also that it provides a return to Treasury over the life of the credit. So over the life of the credit, where are my talking points here? Well, maybe we can get those up in the chat. But essentially, more funding has come back to Treasury in the form of tax revenue than has gone out in tax credits. And that's a key point to make with legislators of all stripes because it shows a strong return on investment for this program. And let's see. So co-sponsorship goals, we did reach a really exciting milestone having reached 100 co-sponsors in the House. That is, I believe it's 58 Democrats, 42 Republicans in the House. So that's really strong bipartisan support, a very bipartisan bill in fact. And so reaching that 100 co-sponsorship goal is extremely, we should take a lot of solace in that and reaching that milestone as a preservation community. We have an opportunity over the next week to increase those numbers and finish this Congress in the most we've ever had in more than a decade, probably. And so that's important for a couple reasons. One, we do have an opportunity to push for passage of HTC Go in year-end tax legislation, the so-called tax extender bill, which is often a piece of legislation that you see come up at the end of a, at the end of a Congress, at the end of a year, in fact, depending on which tax programs are expiring, there usually are at least a few every year. And so it's often considered something that needs to get done. And this is an opportunity for the Historic Tax Credit Growth and Opportunity Act to attach either the whole bill or parts of it. But we want to make sure that we're at the table and voicing support for inclusion in that and any year-end tax bill so we can implement those changes and modernize the credit and then roll over into the next Congress with a strong showing of support for this credit if not all of those provisions make it into a year-end tax bill. So I mentioned the year-end tax legislation we won't know yet again in terms of the lame duck session, how much appetite there will be to address that. Sometimes they push it into the next Congress, but right now again we've got a backstop and we've got an opportunity where Congress will be considering legislation and we have an opportunity to have a seat at the table there. So I believe that's it for the Historic Tax Credit. I'm going to change the slide please and now we have the pleasure of hearing from my colleague Pam Bowman who leads the National Trust Public Lands work including legislative work on behalf of Historic and Cultural Resources. She has over 16 years of experience working in Congress as a lobbyist on federal policy issues, providing advocacy trainings, doing appropriations work and designing national and international advocacy campaigns. So it's my pleasure to turn it over to Pam to provide us an overview on some of the legislation that you're working on. Thank you Shaw and thanks everyone for joining today. Like Shaw mentioned one area of the National Trust's advocacy work is preserving and protecting historic and cultural resources on federal public lands and so very broadly that work includes work on legislation, appropriations and often the public policy work that goes along with that. We do a lot of this work especially when there's an opportunity to pursue a legislative or an administrative designation. Sometimes that's a national park service unit or a national monument designation, but anywhere where we can try to get some permanent protection for a significant historic place. And before I go any further, I just want to share a thank you to all of you. Many of you attended the National Trust's Pass Forward Conference last fall including an advocacy webinar similar to this and your advocacy contributions last year helped to get two of the bills from our AskLisk at those virtual Hill meetings enacted into law by the president in the last year which are really our big wins for the preservation community and demonstrate that this work and this advocacy truly does make an impact and we are hoping that the same will be true for the three bills I'm about to highlight for you as part of our federal public lands work. And as Shaw already mentioned, there's still uncertainty about what the rest of this calendar year looks like in terms of the lame duck session after the midterm elections, but several of these bills have made substantial progress during the last two years in this Congress and we're hopeful there could be some opportunity between now and the end of the year to advance these bills even further. And for each of these ones that I'll mention, we have multiple resources available to you to help you engage in that advocacy. We have the one pager designed specifically for Pass Forward and the visits next week and please also go to our website www.savingplaces.org that has additional website resources including some free tools where you can send letters to congressional offices and places to sign petitions supporting some of these key pieces of legislation. Next slide please. The first bill that we're featuring for our advocacy work in this space is the African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act. The protection and documentation of African American burial grounds has long been neglected and many African American burial grounds are in a state of disrepair, are inaccessible or unmapped and legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate by a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Senators Sherrod Brown and Mitt Romney in the Senate and in the House by Representatives Alma Adams, Don McKeech and Brian Fitzpatrick. If this bill were to be enacted, this important legislation would authorize the National Park Service to establish a $3 million grant program in coordination with governmental, private, and non-profit groups and that would assist communities across the country in identifying, preserving and restoring these historic and cultural sites. Another thing the bill would do is establish a voluntary national network of historic burial grounds and help with the discovery of these places of tribute and memory ahead of any commercial development that may be taking place to avoid disturbances of the locations. So one of the asks in Hill meetings the next few days and weeks with both House and Senate offices is that they co-sponsor and support this legislation. Both the House and the Senate bills have had good subcommittee hearings in this Congress with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee already reporting the bill out favorably eligible for a floor vote. So we are hopeful that additional co-sponsors will continue the momentum on this legislation. Next slide please. The next bill we wanted to share with you is the Route 66 National Historic Trail designation Act. As many of you know the historic Route 66 stretches approximately 2,400 miles from Chicago Illinois all the way to Santa Monica California passing through eight states and more than 300 rural and urban communities. There are numerous buildings along Route 66 that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and it was designated a national seating by way in four states. This legislation would designate Route 66 as a national historic trail that would be administered by the National Park Service and this is following a 1995 study by the National Park Service that determined that Route 66 met the eligibility requirements. A couple congresses ago this bill had a bipartisan and bicameral support and a unanimous House floor vote and we've seen the same thing in this Congress and committee where in the House there was a successful hearing and it passed the committee unanimously. So we're also hopeful for additional action on this bill in the coming weeks and months. So one of the asks in these Hill meetings particularly those eight states that are bisected by Route 66 is that they co-sponsor and support this bill. We have a number of resources that we can share with you on this legislation and just to let you know about the really significant support for this legislation petition signatures in support of this designation number over 71,000 from 49 states the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico with over 80 organizations businesses and local governments expressing their support for this designation and if you haven't already please visit the website I mentioned before to add your name to that petition on our website. Next slide please. The third bill I wanted to mention to you is the Great Bend of the Gila Conservation Act. The unique and sacred Great Bend of the Gila landscape located in Arizona is one of the most significant cultural sites in the southwest. There at least 13 federally recognized tribes maintain cultural connections and there's traces of human presence dating back to 3000 BC. The National Trust has been supportive of this designation for many years has been featured in our national treasure campaign and what the bill would do is it would establish a 330,000 acre Great Bend of the Gila National Conservation Area and protecting unique sites such as rock art and other cultural artifacts. It would also establish another national conservation area and nearly just about 60,000 acres of new wilderness. Also included in that bill are provisions that would significantly enhance the role of tribal governments in the land management process and that includes some of the language modeling after the bearers years in our tribal commission which provides a unique and recent example of tribes co-managing public lands. So one of the asks in hill meetings with house offices especially those in Arizona and the surrounding states is that they co-sponsor and support this bill. And I think we can go to the next slide now. I am now pleased to introduce the next speaker James Green who's going to share with us some information about the historic preservation fund. James is a legislative assistant in Representative Legere Fernandez's office where he handles several issues including those important to the preservation community and James thank you to you and the congresswoman for all your leadership and efforts on important preservation issues and for making time to join us today. I'll now turn it over to you. Thank you so much Pam. Thank you for that introduction. It's wonderful to join you all this afternoon and you know as Pam mentioned my name is James. I'm a legislative assistant for congresswoman Teresa Legere Fernandez and I support her work on the natural resources committee and for those of you all that are not familiar with the congresswoman or New Mexico's beautiful third district that she represents. This is the congresswoman's first term in Congress and and prior to coming to DC she was a public interest lawyer in New Mexico for for decades and and work to bring services and funding to the rural communities that she now represents as well as to you know fight to she fought to advance voting rights promote tribal sovereignty and to protect our environment our secular waters and our cultural resources and and before that she was also a Clinton and Obama presidential appointee and worked as a White House fellow on housing issues and as vice chair of the advisory council on historic preservation which I know is certainly relevant to our conversation today and lastly I just want to you know for those again who don't know say the New Mexico's third district you know encompasses pretty much all of northern New Mexico as well as 19 federally recognized tribes a large swath of federal lands and you know in her role as a congresswoman and before that you know the congresswoman knows that cultural and historic preservation is a really big part of honoring and maintaining New Mexican values and and ways of life and the same goes for communities across the country so with that in mind you know she was very very excited to introduce HR 6589 at the beginning of this year the historic preservation enhancement act and as the slide that is in front of you all you know notes this bill would provide permanent authorization to the historic preservation fund and we know that this is important for providing long-term certainty to the historic preservation fund especially considering you know the that its current authorization is coming up in the near future and the bill would also double deposits into the HPF to 300 million dollars for each fiscal year so that's double the current deposits of 150 million and again you know the congresswoman feels like this is important for expanding the great work that you know state historic preservation offices tribal historic preservation offices the many other grant programs that are funded by the HPF being able to to bill and expand on the great work that that all those folks do and lastly you know the bill makes amounts in the HPF available for expenditure without further further congressional appropriations and in other words this means that you know funds deposited in the historic preservation fund are actually made available every year so they're not reliant on the annual appropriations process and we know this is important considering that for most of the the historic preservation funds life it has not received the full 150 million that it was first authorized at so in other words you know this bill would you know make sure the HPF is around permanently that we're expanding the amount of funding available through it and that funding is going to be available consistently sustainably and with certainty for for all those that use it and in addition to this bill I do want to note that the bill builds upon an amendment that the congresswoman was able to pass through the the House of Representatives as part of the the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and that amendment wasn't as comprehensive as this bill but it would have permanently authorized the historic preservation fund and increased its deposits to 300 million dollars unfortunately the Senate wasn't able to include that language and and their final bill and what we all know now as the the bipartisan infrastructure law but I think it's important to note that that we have passed some of this language through the House of Representatives and that's a good you know demonstration and marker for for historic preservation getting support of a large swath of the the members in the House and I think you know as the congresswoman continues to advocate for historic preservation and specifically this bill I think there are a few things I want to point out about why she's so excited about this and and one is obvious you know she knows that there is inherent value and better preserving our history and cultures in New Mexico and across the country and in New Mexico we certainly have a diverse and unique set of history and cultures which the congresswoman also likes to highlight that the HPF and specifically her bill the Historic Preservation Enhancement Act supports economic development across the country but especially in rural communities and that's through things like heritage tourism building you know pursuing revitalization projects you know in historic downtowns or buildings and facilitating the use of things like this or tax credit or you know supporting our state and tribal historic preservation offices and the role they play and in facilitating infrastructure projects that require section 106 review and making sure that you know projects like that can can move forward in a responsible way and as the you know following the introduction of the bill and really highlighting all these good reasons why it's important we were fortunate enough to have a hearing and the Natural Resources Committee specifically the subcommittee on national parks forests and public lands which was a great opportunity to to highlight the the bill for for members in that committee unfortunately we did receive some pushback from from our colleagues on the the other side of the aisle as it relates to federal spending but certainly as we move forward the congresswoman is going to be on the lookout for opportunities to move this bill forward and and I know many of you have already done this already but and a really big shout out to the the national trust too for for helping to lead these efforts but the congresswoman really appreciates the national trust and and those across the country continuing to educate and advocate for this bill when talking with member offices you know I think a lot of folks and a lot of my colleagues on on the hill just aren't maybe as knowledgeable but at all the good that the HPF does as well as the the growing need for these investments you know as we're we're seeing the demand for a certain cultural preservation increase over time and and as we're seeing you know this sort of growth and and infrastructure projects that are that are much needed but you know through the through the bipartisan infrastructure law and the inflation reduction act and and yeah you know with that in mind I want to thank the national trust again for for having me and look forward to answering any questions you all may have. Well great James thank you so much and we just want to thank the congresswoman again for her leadership we feel not just the trust but the broader preservation community feels just very lucky to have such a strong advocate serving serving in congress and and someone with that technical background to understand the the issue so we we are we're we're glad she's here and champion for for these efforts I did want to before we're going to move to a Q&A section but I thought I'd quickly just recap the historic preservation fund ask on on this chart here and just make sure people knew where we were in the legislative process in terms of appropriations and of course what James and the congresswoman are working on is the authorization which would carry the program well into the future what we have before us before the end of the year hopefully is the FY23 appropriations for the program and I wanted to flag where we where we are with that and what we're encouraging advocates to to relay to the hill next week so there is currently a continuing resolution which is a temporary funding measure that funds the government until congress can pass its appropriations bills when when congress hasn't passed many of those bills they often get put together in what's called an omnibus public or omnibus appropriations bill and and passed all at once and so where we where we are now is in the midst of seeing if congress can come to an agreement on that on that larger bill and we have different levels of funding for the HPF from the House and Senate the the ask of the coalition and we certainly have the support of congresswoman Ledger Fernandez on the ask for 200 million in FY23 and what you'll see from from this slide is how close we're getting there so the House appropriations put the the funding for HPF at 170 just over 170 million and the Senate level that came out of the Senate Appropriations Committee from from Senator Leahy and the chairman was 191 million so a couple key takeaways here one congress has has seen just what James was describing which is an increasing need for funding for historic preservation activities and programs and you know it wasn't that long ago when we were we were increasing incrementally toward 150 million and in the past few years we've seen strong support from congress for for HPF funding so that's that's a key takeaway so there's a big thank you to congress now for recognizing that and increasing fairly significantly for a lot of HPF funding over the last few years and then also to support the higher number which gets closer to representing the need and that that you know we we hope congress will address during the lame duck session something will need to happen either another continuing resolution or reaching agreement on the on on the omnivis appropriations bill so this is also included in your advocacy materials this is an overview of the HPF and all that it does to support historic preservation across the country so with that I think we are going to turn to a few questions so I think we can bring folks back onto the screen and there are a couple questions I'll start off with with one that I see which is which is what is the ask for people that have already cosponsored the historic tax credit growth and opportunity act and I think first it would be a thank you and recognition of the the importance of of modernizing the credit and all that it can do to spur economic and community revitalization the ask you know would be to indicate to the sponsors of the bill that you know either either at the staff level at them or at the member level that they'd like to see this bill passed before the end of the year and they support their efforts to try to include it in an end of the year tax package like it's it's all about creating momentum and some buzz and so I think that is one one effective ask at this stage in the in the legislative session and of course encouraging other members like-minded members to to join on as well so just because the cosponsor doesn't mean they they if they're so inclined and want to do more there's always always more to do from an advocacy standpoint so those are just a few suggestions I don't know if if others have other ideas as well yeah I think also to add to that depending on the staff or your meeting within that meeting you can make some of the other asks that were outlined on the webinar today either the public lands bills I mentioned HPF funding I think those are all opportunities and we have resources available for you to include those in your meeting after your thank you on the tax credit we had another question about how does the HPF request relate to the changes in apportionment that is a good very good question and and certainly timely I my suggestion there is that that there is a relationship between what congress appropriates and the apportionment formula and for folks who are unaware the apportionment is the amount of HPF funding that is distributed to the state historic preservation offices uh each year based on a number of criteria but primarily based on census data and population and uh as you might suspect uh some states are increasing in population others are decreasing and so you you uh when you apportion those funds that can result in changes uh and uh those changes can result in states receiving fewer HPF dollars or more and uh the the key there is that if we can meet the uh request our request uh of of congress and the administration for uh the the state historic preservation offices is 65 65 million this the senate has that at 61 and the house has that at about the eight million what we're going to need to do is get that ship of funding up to at least 62 million and I think once we reach that mark uh it it ensures that there is no decrease uh uh essentially there um each shippo would receive uh either flat or an increase so that that I think is the relationship to be mindful of there and also a key incentive on the HPF ask that we really want the 65 but uh at least uh where the where the where the senate is coming out uh plus a little bit more at 62 is is where we want to be uh but a good question uh are there any asks being made related to the historic easement program um another another good question I think a portion of the advocacy as as we've designed it for next week is that uh we've got our core asks uh between uh specific legislation that Pam noted the HPF asks and the authorization bill that that James outlined um the tax tax credit of course and uh and then other so scenic byways you could certainly include that as part of your ask or other priorities that that you see um so we we did want to leave that open to folks to advance uh other priorities that they may see in their communities uh or or even at the federal level in in terms of the easement program there there is legislation out there that would modify uh uh conservation easements uh which is uh the umbrella which includes historic preservation easements uh and that that is the uh charitable easement conservation uh program act that was included in uh uh in legislation that moved through the senate finance committee uh through the and was attached to the urn act and the urn act is a retirement uh benefit um uh reform type bill that is a priority and is being talked about as as one of the potential pieces of legislation that could come up in the lame duck session um the the national trust is supportive of that that bill and uh we we believe that uh enactment will will help uh unfreeze some of the activity uh in this space and hopefully unfreeze uh uh the preservation easements and and see more more buildings preserved that way i could turn it over to others but perhaps james uh you have a sense for maybe just the lame duck and whether the urn act is something that you're hearing about in in the house uh as a priority or or anything on that on that front might be helpful yeah thanks shaw and you know i would hesitate to predict anything that congress may or may not do uh and but i i think at the end of the day it's going to come down to what um the election how the elections turn out and sort of what the house looks like uh in the next congress i think is going to help guide a lot of what happens the rest of of this go around but uh i think there's certainly a lot of different uh different priorities and competing priorities in the mix and and there's a lot of folks that uh you know are retiring and may not be around next congress that have uh priorities of their own so i think it's going to be uh certainly a dynamic and interesting uh last few months of the the year but i think um exactly how things shake out is really going to depend on uh what happens in the next couple of weeks thank you james to be determined um we have another question on uh transportation enhancements uh and what might be learned from the uh the the demise of transportation enhancements grants which benefited historic preservation um um when i kick it off and then mark or james if you have any any anything to add please please do um i know i know that um that uh we saw certainly a delusion of the transportation enhancement program benefiting historic preservation uh historic preservation is still a uh an eligible activity within the um transportation uh uh enhancements program which which changed names but it was supported through the uh infrastructure bill and funding for that was increased um so uh i think it is something as a preservation community we need to keep our eye on in terms of uh uh ensuring that historic preservation projects are uh competitive and being considered as part of that um so let me pause there and perhaps others have some thoughts it'd be interesting to hear how scenic america might engage on on using use of some of those transportation funding and james i don't want to leave you out so if you have anything to add on there please please feel free as well great um yeah as far as um ronda just posted uh a link you know to the successor to the transportation enhancement program which is called transportation alternatives um which itself i believe is also a successor to the transportation alternatives program so it has been a number of name changes of this program over the years but you can see that this actually received a substantial increase in funding with the bipartisan infrastructure law um and um so 21 uh this program uh the transportation alternatives it's a set aside from the surface transportation block grant program uh in 20 in f y 21 it was 850 million dollars and between f y 22 and 26 it's it hovers around 1.5 billion dollars per year so that's a pretty substantial increase and um and so um there is uh you know funds that are used for this it's not quite exactly the same program as transportation um uh enhancements but um it is uh still the same spirit of what it was and indeed refers back to the old transportation enhancement program even in its authority so um you know as far as the lesson learned um you know it's it it's really the theme of this of this workshop this you know event which is you know we need to keep advocating we need to make sure that your voices are heard if this is a uh if this is something that's important to you which it's it's unique america we think it's critical um then you need to advocate for it and so that's what it comes down to thank you mark uh we had a question about um a potential flip in the house to republican control and what that might mean for um uh downward pressure on federal spending um and you know without uh being it realizing that it may be difficult to be specific on that point james perhaps you might um perhaps you might speak to uh a little bit more about the hearing on hpf reauthorization and and um um some of the concern about about spending and and what you expect perhaps from from the committee there or what uh what you might be anticipating on that on that front sure thanks ya you know in the hearing uh that the natural resources committee the and specifically the subcommittee for national park source and public lands held on the historic preservation enhancement act we certainly heard uh concerns from our republican colleagues uh regarding uh you know federal spending generally speaking uh and and the contributions to federal uh spending uh that an increase in the deposits to the historic preservation fund would make and and you know uh similar concerns with with making that funding mandatory moving forward uh and i think you know as i understand it you know there are a lot of concerns about how that funding uh may contribute to uh inflation uh in addition to the deficit i think you know we'll continue to hear those concerns moving forward uh and and i want to speak to exactly what would happen uh you know in a future congress uh with potentially different uh a different makeup uh and a different majority but i think um the the uncertainty that the the future holds i think are are good reasons to continue to advocate and push for additional funding for this dark preservation fund uh in this fiscal year if for no other reason uh to raise the baseline so to speak for any further uh conversations and negotiations that that may occur in the future and would also say that you know it's a good reason to pass my bosses historic preservation enhancement act because that would uh you know eliminate a lot of the uncertainty uh moving forward that may come with changes in power in either the house the or the senate um so i think to in conclusion i think the the uncertainty that that we may be seeing moving forward i think are good reasons to continue to to fight for for adequate funding this fiscal year and also to continue to support this dark preservation enhancement act to to try and find a more durable solution moving forward well said james thank you um um so i think we're we're uh i think that we're we got through most of the questions there so thank you everybody for participating i think we're nearing the end of our time uh but before we wrap up if we could just switch to our last slide there um we wanted to provide some additional information about staying connected to the government relations department's work uh you can visit the advocacy resource center on forum and subscribe to our monthly advocacy newsletter so with with that i want to thank everybody who attended today's workshop uh a special thanks to our speakers for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us and uh remember that on-demand sessions are available now on the conference platform so check out the support telling the full american story through efforts to reauthorize the historic preservation fund session produced uh by the government relations team as well where where we do go into uh a bit more detail on on on the grant programs that the hpf funds and uh what you can do to support congresswoman tracer fernanda lezard fernandez's legislation so we hope to see everyone during the scheduled content uh running from november 1st through 4th if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact uh the policy at savingplaces.org and thank you very much for joining today