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Your basic research should include getting information on how your board operates. You need to find out about the structure of the process and its rules, both written and unwritten. With legislatures and most other boards, it is particularly worthwhile to sit in on a few meetings at the start of your research. The advice you get from observers will make more sense when you can put it in context, and you are likely to pick up some of the subtle dynamics yourself. Friendly members of the body are apt to be your best source for practical information about who would make a good sponsor, which members are likely to support you, which are effective as committee chairs, etc.
The following sections go over most of the things you should find out about your board by following some of the more typical processes used by legislatures, start to finish. Most city councils, county commissions and other boards have simpler processes, although most use some of the processes described here. This section ends with tips for working with boards.
There are three main possibilities. Most typically, policy proposals are introduced by a member of the board. In some places, policy can also be proposed by an executive or administrator, like a mayor, the president of a university or a department head. Sometimes these proposals need the sponsorship of a board member as well. In some systems, commissions which are not subgroups of the Board, like local human rights commissions or faculty committees, are allowed to send policy proposals to the board as well. Like executive proposals, these may also need the support of a board member.
If commissions or committees which are not a part of the Board can recommend policy, you should think about whether you can use the commission's process to your advantage. Find out what commissions exist, and who the members of each are. You may want to use a commission's process to build support for your proposal before you get to your board. If the commission holds hearings and it or its chair looks particularly open to your proposal, a commission hearing may give you a good opportunity to make sure that the hearing presents the information you want to get out. It also may give you the chance for a hearing on the problem instead of the policy, which can be helpful.
Not the stork. Once again, there are three main possibilities. The most typical pattern until recently was that the person (again, usually a board member) who "introduced" the policy would start with a fairly general idea about what the policy should cover. She or he would ask the City Attorney or the Board's lawyer to write a specific proposal. Sometimes, this would happen before the proposal was introduced; sometimes, the board member would actually introduce the proposal with a general sentence or two, and then send it to the lawyers to be written up. Sometimes, a board member -- or more frequently a commission -- will present the board with a detailed report which calls for a policy. The report usually will not have a draft of the policy itself, but it will have detailed recommendations about what the policy should say. Reports like this also usually get sent to an attorney to be translated into a specific proposal.
More and more frequently, those who have organized to campaign for the proposal will present the member who is going to introduce it with a complete draft. The draft will then go to the Board's attorney for review. If you can get your sponsor to accept a draft from you, this is by far the best way to start.
The advantage of starting with a draft is simple; your draft is likely to be stronger than anything a city attorney comes up with, and you will have a much easier time negotiating about the proposal if you start strong.
Your draft is likely to be stronger than any board lawyer's draft because even board lawyers with the best of intentions usually begin writing using a policy adopted by another body as a model. But other policies are usually the end result of a process of negotiation and compromise, so they are usually far from ideal. In addition, few lawyers can resist the temptation to resolve some of the hard questions themselves. As they write, they will often make some compromises for you. Of course, if the Board's lawyer is hostile to your proposal, she or he may use the opportunity to "write the idea up" to make it as narrow or useless as possible.
You need to start strong. It is true, of course, that after you have a proposal, board members can amend it to make it stronger, as well as to compromise. But one there is a concrete proposal, board members tend to treat it as the starting point in negotiations with opponents. It is much more difficult to toughen a weak proposal when there is active opposition than it is to weaken a tough proposal.
The drawback to having the member introduce a complete draft is that some board lawyers dislike it. In part, they correctly see it as "horning in" on what has traditionally been part of their job. It also takes a lot of policy-making power away from the lawyers, and like other people, they don't like losing power. While you'll do better if you can stay friendly with the lawyers, don't give up shaping influence over the first draft to do it.
As explained in the last section, proposals typically go first to an attorney to be put into a draft. Find out if they go to other departments for comment or input as well. If they do, you may want to contact some of the important department heads and begin lobbying them before they respond.
If the proposals go to selected departments for comment, find out which. If, as is often the case, the selection depends on the content of the proposal, you may want to think about steps you might be able to take to get the proposal to good departments or keep it away from bad ones.
Once policy proposals come back in draft from the attorney, they usually go to a subcommittee of the Board for a hearing. A few boards send proposals out to independent commissions, like Human Rights Commissions, and a few have the Board as a whole hold hearings.
If your board has a committee process, you need to find out what the committees are, how the Board decides which committee gets the proposal and whether it may go to more than one committee (do the same thing if the Board sends the proposal to independent commissions). If there is more than one committee or commission which could get the proposal, figure out which would be best and then see if you can do anything to get the proposal before the best committee.
To decide which committee is likely to be the best, find out who chairs each committee, and which board members sit on each. Obviously, your first consideration should be which committee is most likely to recommend that the board adopt the proposal. But the final recommendation isn't the only thing to consider. Find out about the committee's internal processes. How do proposals come to a vote? Sometimes the sponsor can insist, sometimes the committee chair must agree to schedule a vote. Often, committee chairs decide whether or not hearings will be held. If the Committee is required to hold a hearing before taking a vote, the Chair may have effective control over whether there is a vote. Find out who controls how the hearing is structured, etc. If the committee chair can control the progress of the proposal, or the hearings, a committee with fewer supporters but a sympathetic chair may be best. If there are ways to get the proposal out of committee without a favorable recommendation from the committee, a committee with a good chair but without a majority in favor of the proposal could be best.
Since committees are often organized around certain subjects (finance, health, etc.) you may be able to change the proposal to make it more likely that it will go to one committee than another. Obviously, you shouldn't make changes which significantly alter the proposal unless you think you have much to gain by influencing the assignment.
If the president of the Board or some other person decides which committee gets a bill, and if she or he has a lot of discretion in making the decision, think about getting a sponsor for the proposal who may help get it to a good committee. For example, bills are often sent to committees chaired by their sponsors as long as they have some connection to the committee's function.
Find out if your proposal needs a favorable recommendation from the committee to get back to the Board. This is customary, but there are often more obscure procedures which may allow you to get the proposal in front of the whole board without a favorable committee recommendation. For example, boards can often call proposals out of committee with a discharge motion.
Find out how many times the board must vote on the proposal. City councils are often required to pass proposals twice, occasionally even three times. Final votes by bodies which vote more than once are often viewed as formalities, but you should never count on that with a potentially controversial proposal. Keep your lobbying program in place until the end.
Find out if some types of proposals require "super majorities" (for example, a two thirds vote). You find these most often with spending proposals. You may be able to adjust the proposal to avoid a super majority requirement. For example, you might want to think about dropping a requirement that the city post nondiscrimination notices in its offices if spending bills require a super majority but other policies do not.
Although all federal and state laws require some participation from an executive (the president or a governor), this is not always true with city councils or other boards. Find out. If you do need executive approval (typically from the mayor), she or he needs to be a prime target for your lobbying.
An executive who strongly supports your proposal can be a powerful lobbyist. Sometimes board members who agree with a policy (or say they do) will be reluctant to support a proposal if they think it will not be approved; they don't want to risk losing support if the campaign is not going to succeed. Strong support from the executive may be critical to getting the support of these members; the prospect of a veto may be enough to keep them from voting for a policy.
An executive's effectiveness depends at least partly on the extent to which she or he is willing to make the policy an important part of his or her agenda. Members who are on the fence will be more willing to vote favorably to please the executive if they think the vote will be remembered when they have something important to them which the executive needs to approve.
If you need executive approval, find out what happens if the executive "pockets" the proposal and neither signs nor vetoes it. In some systems this is a "pocket veto," in some a "pocket approval." In some systems, the effect of neither signing nor vetoing depends on when the proposal reaches the executive. If the timing matters, you may want to make sure that an executive who is on the fence has the option of pocket approval, and does not have the option of a pocket veto.
You need to know all of the body's written rules as well as its structure.
If the body has its own written rules, get a copy.
Someone in your organization needs to know Robert's Rules of Order.
Many bodies rely completely on Robert's Rules of Order, and most others use
Robert's to answer questions their own rules don't.
Sometimes, knowing the rules isn't enough.
You need to know the rules, but you can't force the body to stick to them.
Every board has unwritten rules, and structures that exist only in practice and tradition. These you can find out by talking to people who are part of the process, or people who have been watching it, or by observing it closely yourself. Here are some of the things you should look for.
Are the Board's committees dominated by the chairs? Often chairs technically have very little power but actually control committees by controlling resources (staff, etc.) or simply through traditions of deference. Obviously, the more committees are effectively controlled by chairs, the more important it is to try to steer the bill to a committee with a chair who is not hostile.
What traditions of deference does the board have? With some boards, votes by the full board are almost a formality; virtually every proposal which is voted out of committee gets approved. With these boards, the real approval process is in committee, and members who are not on the committee frequently participate informally in various ways. On the other hand, with some boards, anything brought to the committee by its chair is approved and committee vote is essentially meaningless.
To what extent is the body as a whole dominated by its leadership? With some bodies, strong support from a speaker or a chair is a virtual guarantee of passage, opposition a virtual guarantee of defeat. Where this is true, the leadership must be the dominant focus of your lobbying.
Finally, as with written rules, unwritten rules are sometimes broken when people feel strongly enough about an issue. Know the unwritten rules but never rely on them totally.
Some activists try to avoid bringing LGBT policies up near elections. The idea is that politicians who are worried about losing support will be most skittish at election time, and most willing to take risks when they think it possible that the vote will have faded from voters' memories before the next election. Politicians are skittish around elections. But while that may not be a good time to take a vote on a policy, it is frequently a great time to begin or be in the midst of a campaign. Candidates nights are a great way to get public discussion of the issue started, and a good way to find out where the members you'll be dealing with stand. Moreover, if you can get policy supporters visibly involved in the electoral process, you may be able to use the election to get commitments for support from members.
Some activists try to avoid bringing policies up when budgets are under consideration. They fear that the policy will become an item for trading in the tough budget process which is the most important function of many boards. However, if you have the support of an important budget player, this can work the other way.
For similar reasons, some activists try to avoid having policies voted on at the end of a legislative session with boards that have sessions (some boards meet for a "session" during a certain time of the year, others meet throughout the year). Again, whether "end of session" trading is a drawback or an advantage probably depends most on how important the policy is to your major supporters. Finally, timing the vote can be very important if referendum or initiative is a possibility.
Your sponsor should be committed to the policy. You want the sponsor to be effective at lobbying other members, to treat the policy as important when she or he is trading with other members, and to use any formal or informal prerogatives she or he may have as a committee member, chair, etc. to help the policy along. But being a supporter is not enough. Try to avoid members who are isolated; they won't be effective at lobbying other members. If you've got two (or more) political parties, try to get members who can work with members of both. Senior members or moderates, if they are truly committed, may be more effective at bringing others over than someone with a stronger ideological commitment might be. Look for committee chairs or leaders who might be able to use their positions to move the proposal along.
Look out for members who might sponsor your proposal just to exploit it. A member who can easily afford to favor LGBT civil rights or domestic partnership (either because she or he has a liberal district or a safe slot) might be anxious to sponsor so that he or she can make points with, and maybe pick up financial support from, LGBT people and others who support civil rights. There isn't anything wrong with that if the member is willing to really sponsor and work for the bill. But sometimes prospective sponsors like these plan to give nothing other than their names.
There is something to be said for both theories. If a campaign is long (more than a year or more than a session with bodies that have them) it is very important to make members take a stand on the policy every year or every session. It is much easier for politicians worried about the political risk involved in supporting a policy to vote against you if they think it will only have to be done once, or perhaps not at all if you don't press for a vote unless you can win it. They assume (all too often correctly) that one bad vote will be forgotten soon enough, and that if they are otherwise somewhat supportive of LGBT people, they will get our support back. Actual votes are also often the best barometer of where you stand, and they can tell you who you need to work on.
On the other hand, a vote tends to end a chapter in a campaign. Once a body has voted on a policy, it is likely to want to be finished with it at least for a time. You will usually have to wait until the next year or the next session to begin lobbying the body again in earnest, so you shouldn't call for votes at every opportunity. (Never go away completely though; let members know casually that you and your issue are still around.) Ask for a vote when you think it is time to bring a stage of the campaign to an end.
In addition, losing votes can demoralize the community. Although it is probably not ever a good idea to predict a loss, you should try to prepare the community a bit, for example by making one of the campaign themes be that it could be a long battle and that the campaign, like the community, is here to stay.
Not many things are more important than accurately counting votes. Never count a member's vote until the member personally tells that campaign that she or he will vote for the proposal.
Don't even count a promise unless the commitment is made either to a vote counter or some one deeply involved in the campaign.
Listen carefully to exactly what the member says. Members who are not opposed in principle but who do not want to support you for other reasons will often try to get you to leave them alone by giving you the impression they will support you without actually promising to do it. Don't accept vague assurances of support; ask explicitly if the member will vote yes on the proposal.
No commitment is forever. Even if a member has explicitly promised you support, keep checking in periodically to ask if they have new questions or concerns, and explicitly renew the commitment. Try to have at least two people in the organization keeping track of the vote count. You are more likely to flush out ambiguous promises if two people are tracking.
>> Next: 21. Public Hearings
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