 That's neat. Thank you. Okay, good. Great. So I'll start with an overview of the main state government. Wow, can't get used to sharing my screen and I can't figure out how stuff works. Sorry, everyone. The main state government has three branches. Each of them are an equal rank to each other and each branch has its own duties and responsibilities. So the executive branch includes the governor and their administration. The legislative branch includes the state senate and the state house. And the judicial branch includes the state judges and courts. Now we can go a little more into detail. So the executive branch approves or vetoes laws. It's headed by the governor, which is currently Janet Mills. The executive branch executes laws that are passed by the legislature. It's responsible for calling the senate and house to session. And the governor cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. The judicial branch interprets the law. It's headed by the main supreme court. It's responsible for answering requests by the governor and the legislature to issue opinions on current or proposed bills. The judicial branch also includes lower courts like the district and superior courts. And now the legislative branch. So the executive branch is in charge of writing, developing and amending laws. In Maine, there are 35 state senators. There are also 151 state representatives plus three spots for non voting members in the house representing the Penobscot nation, the personal quality tribe and the Holton band of malice Indians. The senate members are reelected every two years. And the leadership of the legislature is elected by legislators and includes the 10 legislators on the legislative council, a speaker of the house and a senate president. At the election on November 8 of this year, mayors voted on various offices, including positions in the judiciary, executive and legislative branches. The results that are important to us as we plan for bills this session are the executive, which is governor Mills and the legislature. The legislature for the 131st session is composed of 82 Dems, 67 Republicans and two independence and tribal members. On the senate side, there are 22 Democrats and 13 Republicans. The governor is also a Democrat. So over to Ezra to talk about the basics of how a bill becomes a law in Maine. All right. Thank you Laura. Yeah, so basically a bill starts its process by being submitted by a legislator, maybe the legislator came up with the idea themselves or maybe they got the idea from a constituent or something they wanted to see change in their community. It's then printed by the revisers office, given an official LD number. And these stands for legislative document, and then it's assigned to a committee related to the other bills topic. So in this system there are 17 joint standing committees and each one has a different focus. So for example, later you'll hear about legislation that began in the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. Each committee is made up of 13 total legislators. And because the house is much bigger than the Senate, there are three senators and three and 10 representatives on each one of these committees. After that, the legislation is scheduled for a public hearing. These can begin as early as January and often go as late as May. And the, when the session usually ends around May or even early June. Yeah, and the public hearing is when we usually take our chance to impact the bill, but you'll learn more about that later. I don't want to spoil anything. Yeah, so after the public hearing the bill scheduled for a work session. That's where they rework the bill based on maybe based on stuff they heard during the public hearing. The bills may be revised and it's rewritten to become a final product. And sometimes it takes multiple work sessions for this process to be completed. After all these sessions are over, the bills voted on by the committee, there's different statuses for bills after they're voted on. There's a unanimous ought to pass. Everyone thinks it should have passed. It should pass. There's a ought to pass as amended. There's a ought not to pass. And then what's also common is that there's a divided report where some members of the committee say ought to pass. Maybe some members of the committee say it ought to pass as amended. Some members of the committee say ought not to pass it off. But if it has a majority ought to pass or ought to pass as amended kind of violence, that's much worse than that. But like, if that's the tone and the votes are trending in the ought to pass direction. It, sorry, it goes back to the House of Origin. So if a senator sponsored the bill and led the effort, it goes back to Senate for representatives it goes back to the House of Representatives. So then it will have its first and second reading in this chamber. This will involve debate and maybe amendments will get added at the point, at this point. After that, it's what's called pass to be engrossed. And once something is passed to be engrossed, it's sent to the other chamber. So if it started in the Senate, it goes to the House of Representatives. But then it will. The other chamber can pass it to be engrossed. If that happens, it goes to the House of Representatives for enactment and then to the Senate for enactment. After all of this is done. Finally, it heads to the governor. The governor has a few options. So the governor can sign the bill into law. The governor can choose to veto the bill. So the governor chooses to veto the bill goes back to the chambers and if two thirds of each chamber decide to override the governor's veto the bill becomes law anyway. Also, the governor can neither sign nor veto and at that point, the legislation will become law without the governor signature after 10 days. So this is something that is kind of a niche scenario, but it's called a pocket veto where the governor decides not to sign it, but oh no, there are fewer than 10 days left in the legislative session so it doesn't become law and it's basically a veto without having the political baggage of vetoing the bill. Yeah, so sometimes there are bills that are time sensitive, and this is called emergency legislation, and if two thirds of both chambers agree that it's emergency legislation it will come to pass immediately so an example of that was the home committee heating an emergency rental assistance bill that recently passed and then if it's not an emergency, or they decided the two thirds fails, it will take 90 days after the legislature adjourns for it to become law. All right. But how do we come into this picture to answer that question I'll pass it to Anna. So testimony and public process, how and through what tools can constituents weigh in. So there was a long complicated process from idea to a bill, but an every step in the way, you can pitch in. If you have an idea for a bill, you can actually go to your representative or your senator and say this is what's important to me, you don't have to know how to write policy. You don't have to have a bill written part of what they do in the State House is write bills. So either the representative could write it for you, or, or just send the idea to their rises office and they'll write it as well and then it would go through review. So that's part of it is contacting your legislators about bill ideas and specific bills at the very beginning. Or on the flip side, if you're like, Oh, I really just want to help things that are already happening. I don't necessarily have my own, my own thoughts here. You can also just support bills that are already moving their way through. Or you can also ask folks, you know, say you're really into public transit, but that may already be a bill already. You can reach out to folks at organizations like Sierra Club main or many action or me for climate justice, any of these organizations and say, Hey, do you know of a bill that is working on blank. And that is a really great way to get informed of what you're interested in. So then it's, how do you support that bill. Well, often there are a ton of ways to support each bill is each bill has its own steps that it needs to take. Maybe that specific initiative really needs everyone to tweet or really needs there to be an art build or a strike. So often the people who are organizing behind that bill have ideas but acting as an individual you also have a lot of options. You can do education, your community. You can try to get as many folks as possible to submit testimony. You can write your own testimony, which we will just talk a little bit about how to do. And you can also do public opinion pieces like writing your local newspaper or participating in public forums. The great thing about writing to your local newspaper is that if you write a letter in your local newspaper about a piece of client policy, you can very easily turn that letter into a piece of testimony and then send it in as your testimony in support of a bill. So it's also a really good idea to contact your legislators about those called up and just say hey, I'm your constituent and I support this a very simple call they just want to hear that you care. And I think the most tangential like the what kind of comes farther down the line, but it's still there is electing legislators who you know care about your values. Because that will eventually, they will eventually then hopefully vote yes on bills that you care about as well or front no depending on the bill if you don't want to pass. And the other great thing about kind of advocating for bills is that it can seem scary, and it can seem like there's a lot to do, but luckily a lot of organizations already have resources for this sort of thing. And so I'm able to be sending some links in the chat on a, you know, where to submit testimony, sending the main action guide on how to advocate for legislation. And like I mentioned, there's all these different organizations who can stay here in the right direction. So if you really want to independently write your own testimony to submit, that's great. There's a lot of wider movement of people for a specific bill or initiative. That's also great. There's no wrong way to weigh in, but there's many different routes to go. And these are just a few of them. And so this information will be in this presentation but also a lot of this information around testimony and writing letter to editor is in the main youth action advocacy guide which on your set a link to in the chat. Thank you so much, Anna. And just seeing in the chat to from Becky about legislators really liking to hear from constituents. And just have to agree. Yeah. Yeah, lobbyists are most of the people that reach out and so you as an individual constituent have have a lot of power. So with that, I am going to pass it over to to Amara to talk a bit about a bill that she worked on, and to share an example of kind of the process that Ezra talked about earlier. Thanks so much, Ania. So, as a senior in high school actually so 18 or so. I joined this working group. This was a working group of youth and community partners who really wanted to convene a space to talk about climate education. In my high school I received no formal instruction on climate where the environment, and it was something that I was really passionate about, and it had self stopped those opportunities so I was really excited to just have a space to talk to folks about this interest and passion. What I didn't know is that the working group would ominate into a tremendous advocacy working group that actually advocated for climate education to be featured in the state's four year climate action plan, which was I think just celebrated its two year mark just last December. And we felt pretty excited about the climate education being featured in the climate action plan, and using that momentum. On the next slide, I'm describing a retreat that the working group actually had. And this retreat, we decided to go forward with a bill in the main legislature. A lot of us hadn't had any experience in advocacy and policy up until that point. I had no experience up until that point. We had a lot of folks who shared that as well. However, there was a number of factors in our favor. There was a budget surplus with the legislature and also the legislative and executive leadership that had showed a lot of promise on climate action, also weighing that we had some hurdles. It was a short session so the session is typically two years, the first year being the longer session, and then the second year being the shorter session, which is usually the emergency session. And so in the emergency session, a lot less bills are heard, a lot less of them actually make it through the legislative council process. And so that actually ended up being our biggest hurdle was that after we had decided to go forth with the bill, and we had our wonderful bill sponsor representative, representative Lydia Bloom, the bill did not make it out of legislative council. And so we kind of just thought, hey, you know, that was a good run, we will try again next year. But myself, Anya and a couple other of the working group members had actually convened an information session for legislators to understand a little bit more about the context of the bill. And I think it's really important to ensure that folks actually know what it is you are asking for in these in these bills. And so a lot of the legislators had actually thought that the bill was a mandate for climate education. And so we had had the opportunity to clarify that and some legislators had actually came to the listening session, and we were able to appeal that legislative council decision and so the bill did go ahead and move for in the main legislature last session. As far as our advocacy approach is concerned, that's on the next slide. There were a number of steps in this process that both Ezra and Anna just described, and the first one being testimonies and public hearing so up until that point I had never testified before and I was incredibly nervous. I just like remember like being kind of a mess the morning of testimony and one of the legislators actually unmuted themselves because we were still on zoom at that point. And they said, hey, I got to stay off video I'm tending to my goats. And it was in that moment I realized these are these are people. They have their lives they have their everyday things that they're doing they're tending to goats which is a pretty cool thing to be doing. And so I think that helped to take a lot of the pressure off of testifying. And so in the public hearing, it was the Education subcommittee that heard the bill and it made it out of the committee, which was awesome. The next step was really grassroots advocacy so I wrote my first letter to the editor and supported a number of other people and writing theirs. Also did some lobbying reaching out directly to legislators about the the bill and seeing what questions they had and building a grassroots campaign, which included the Youth Day of Action which there's actually a photo up on the slide here. And so one of the bills that the Youth Day of Action focused around and I think it was a huge success the Youth Day of Action, and it really went to legislators understanding how important this bill as well as a number of other bills were really important to main And so the bill passed in the House, it passed in the Senate and then the big next step was the appropriations table where it would be determined if the bill would get any money. And so, after the bill passed in both the House and Senate, the bill was actually funded at $2 million over $2 million was $2.1 million. And on the next side here you'll see the governor signing the bill into law that was done in May of last year. And funds will be included in the budget for this year so I think the Department of Education is actually going to be administering the grant program that the bill supports, and educators will be able to apply for grant funds so that they're able to receive the professional development they need to introduce climate education into their classrooms. Overall, it was incredibly empowering experience to be a part of this process. And I've learned a tremendous amount about legislative advocacy through it. I think now I'm going to go ahead and pass it to Anna for another example of a legislative bill. Yeah, so another example of what can happen with certain bills this one doesn't have a slide just basic so quick story is that last session. There was work on a bill called the Pine Tree Amendment. And at the time the Pine Tree Amendment was LD 489. The LD numbers change every year so if, for example, we you reintroduce a bill that didn't pass it's going to it would have a different LD number. But last session it was LD 489. And the Pine Tree Amendment would secure the constitutional right for manors to clean water clean air in a healthy environment, which means that there'd be, you know, constitutional grounds to defend in natural resources. Those rights were ever infringed upon. And this is a very important bill to make sure that environmental rights are for everyone. And up there with our rights to, you know, freedom of speech and other things. And so that we can protect what we love about Maine. Unfortunately, though, a constitutional amendment needs a lot of votes, a lot more than just a simple majority because it would amend the main constitution. It's two thirds of the House and the Senate. And the Pine Tree Amendment fell just short of two thirds in the House, which means that what it's called the bill dies. A more typical bill, it would die if it just didn't get a majority, but amendment also dies if it doesn't get two thirds. So it's a sad thing when a bill dies, but it doesn't mean that the movement or the idea is dead. Because the people are still working. Folks are still onto it. And there's more to do. And you can reintroduce bills. There's nothing saying that if a bill doesn't get passed, you can't go for it again. So if a bill dies one session, it can, you know, be brought back to life. And I don't believe there is a way to ban a bill from ever being reintroduced or just saying like a definite no. And so the Pine Tree Amendment is coming back this session. And someone mentioned like how can you learn more about, you know, upcoming legislation. The Pine Tree Amendment in the website I just linked has a newsletter which is a good way to get updates. But so that's an example of what happens if a bill is vetoed. In terms of, you know, what other things that can go wrong. I just want to share another quick story is that I don't know if we mentioned it in the when we talked about bills going from, you know, idea to law but there's also around a confirmation votes with the Senate in the house. Look at a bill and kind of say yes again, even if they already voted yes on it. It's just it's just like a double check sort of thing. And like 99% of the time, the bill if a bill went through the first real round of votes, it's fine with the confirmation votes. Sometimes, but sometimes not necessarily. And that can happen. And so, for example, two legislative sessions ago, there was a bill that was considered pretty radical it was a fossil fuel divestment bill that would take means money out of the fossil fuel industry. I was new to the legislative session then, and I didn't understand what confirmation votes were. So I we so once it got past the Senate. We all like put it all over social media and we're like it passed we did it we're done. And everyone was like wait no and you still did the confirmation votes. And if the information gets out before the confirmation votes there's a chance that senators maybe like, oh no this crazy bill we should never have said yes to this. That's why it's really good to have public education like this and then there isn't sort of those missteps that could accidentally lead to a bill not going as far as you like. Thanks so much Anna. Um, so that is the end of our formal presentation part of this evening. I know we just threw a ton of information at you all. So I would love to just open it up. If any of the presenters have things that you'd like to add that you forgot about or want to, you know, add to from your presentation go for it but would also love to open it up for questions.