Lobby Day 2017
Key Deets
What: The one day a year where we come together in force to lobby Maryland's lawmakers about the bills that affect our clients and work the most.
When: Thursday, February 23, 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Detailed timeline here
Where: Annapolis, MD—specifically, the Stanton Center (92 W. Washington St., Annapolis, MD 21401) and Lawyers' Mall
How: Targeted lawmaker visits + loud signs and voices at the noontime rally + hearings and testimony
Why: We are committed to social justice and fight against policies that cause and perpetuate homelessness.
Strategy
Our legislative strategy for Lobby Day 2017 focuses on three bills, strategically selected from a larger list of key bills that align to the agency’s advocacy priorities—and applying constituent pressure to lawmakers on those bills. Check back Tuesday, February 14, for bill and lobbying team specifics.
The big 3
- HB519 Public Health – Overdose and Infectious Disease Prevention Safer Drug Consumption Facility Program. Read more here.
- HB1/SB230 – Maryland Healthy Working Families Act. Read more here.
- HB172/SB728 – Home Act of 2017. Read more here.
Click here for bill summaries/analyses for these bills.
These bills span the three advocacy areas that are the cornerstone of the Health Care for the Homeless mission: “high-quality integrated health care, affordable housing and sustainable incomes.”
Together, they offer a range of important advocacy opportunties:
- Sick leave has long been in the works, we’ve been part of its advocacy all along and it’s a likely win
- Safe consumption is relatively new (it was introduced last year only to be withdrawn) and allows us to get in on the ground floor of advocacy around the issue (at a time when opioid use is front and center on the public radar) and test our own organizing capacity
- The Home Act isn’t new at the state level but could get new momentum due to traction at the local level in several counties, including Baltimore County; our community has advocated for it in the past; it, too, represents an opportunity for us to be out front on a critical issue for our community
- Two of these three bills are cross-filed in both the House and the Senate, and there is no committee overlap among them. So together, these three bills represent five committees…and lots of lobbying potential
Finally, we will be at the lobby day rally with our coalition partners from the Behavioral Health Coalition, so we’ll have the opportunity to support the Keep the Door Open Act there. Also, at 1 p.m. on lobby day, the Keep the Door Open bill will have a hearing in the House. (Keep the Door Open bill summary/analysis here.)
Teams
We are organizing our staff lobbying teams along care team lines, so that each care team (Magenta, Steel, etc.) will also be a Lobby Day team. For the Tie-Dye and A teams, we are doing something a little different, because they are so large. We’re adding Tie-Dye team members to the nine (single-color) care teams, and breaking the A team into several teams.
Each Lobby Day team will:
- have approximately 15 team members
- be assigned one of the three bills we as an agency are pushing on Lobby Day
- be assigned 2-4 lawmakers to visit and lobby on that bill
- engage in other activities (sign making, rally, packet deliveries, hearings) throughout the day
For the lobbying piece, we’ll provide each team with its specific bill and bill information and background, lawmaker names and office numbers, meetings times and talking points to use in those meetings.