Legislative Process/Lobbying 101 Course Outline

Lobbying 101 Course outline:

– registration & disclosure requirements

– Lobbying ethics

– “How a bill becomes a law”/ basics of the legislative process (including the “civics book” version as well as additional insights regarding exceptions illustrating how the process “really works”).

– Legislative rules, exceptions and waivers

– Legislative committees: Their role, how they function and how to work with them
(including the respective roles of committee minority party staff).

– Legislative Counsel Bureau & how to access it

– Glossaries of key legislative terms common references to types and categories of bills

– key legislative publications, documents and
materials: What they contain, which ones are the most important and how to use them.

– How to read a bill

– Dos and don’ts of testifying

– Rules for effective advocacy

– Attributes of a successful lobbyist

– Advice from senior legislative staff

– How to choose the right author for your sponsored bill

– The lobbyist/client relationship and respective roles in Sacramento and the district

Lobbying 101 is not just for new or prospective lobbyists. In fact, attendees fall into the following six categories:

1) Prospective lobbyists

2) New relatively inexperienced lobbyists

3) Veteran lobbyists.

4) Lobbyist Employers who want to learn more about the process so that they can more usefully interact with and give direction to their lobbyists. This group also includes boards, legislative committees and general membership of organizations which employ lobbyists.

5) Personnel who support lobbyists, including administrative, secretarial, communications staff and many others.

6) Interested citizens, including political activists who want to become better informed about how the legislature functions

Legislative Terminology – Using it Correctly

Every Legislative body has its own official terminology as well as its own lingo. Many terms are the same across most if not all jurisdictions but some terms are unique to a particular state and others mean different things in different venues.

To be a successful lobbyist, one MUST become familiar with all the key terms as they are used in his or her particular jurisdiction. Why is this true? If you are going to succeed you must know what people mean when they use specific words in specific ways. Likewise, it is important that you are able to communicate so that others understand precisely what you mean. Also, if you are not using terms as they understood in your jurisdiction, you are, in effect, placing a sign on your back that says: ” I am a rookie, please take advantage of me.”

Let’s look at a single example. In Congress & in most state legislatures, legislators who introduce bills are called sponsors. In California, a sponsor is the entity who requested a legislator to introduce a bill while that legislator is referred to as the “author”. You can imagine the confusion that results when someone unfamiliar with that practice either asks who the sponsor is when they mean the author or responds to such a question.

Wherever you are lobbying, it is critical to locate a high quality glossary & to become familiar with its definitions. That doesn’t mean you have to memorize every term & definition but you do have to develop that working familiarity.

My experience shows that most glossaries are not worth the paper they are printed on.  Finding a good glossary is critical. Almost every jurisdiction that I’ve researched has at least one that is the gold standard for that venue. Find it & use it!