By Elena Rae and Sheila Ramerman
Virtual Lobby Day was held via Zoom on Thursday, March 18. First, Trish Garner gave a tutorial titled “Tips for Communicating with Legislators” that was full of practical advice such as how to find out what’s in front of the Oregon legislature, how to prepare for a conversation with a legislator, how to find out who’s in favor and who’s opposed, how to identify a legislator’s staff, how to present your information, how to listen to what the legislator is saying (nuance is important!), and how to close the conversation. It’s important to be prepared – not only with what you want to say, but with information or data to counter opposition.
Then Trish introduced a panel that consisted of:
- Rep. Karin Power (Milwaukie)
- Carrie Leonard, PhD (Physical Oceanography), Chief of Staff to Rep. Power
- Alicia Temple, Legislative Advocate at Oregon Law Center
This is Rep. Power’s 5th year/3rd term in the legislature. She is an environmental law attorney, who enjoys learning about things she previously knew nothing about. She has worked on Oregon’s environmental policy (cap & trade). This term she is working on early childhood issues, and is also on I-5 bridge replacement committee, among 3-4 other committees. She is also championing the bill to require publicly traded corporations to have a minimum number of women and people from underrepresented communities on their boards of directors.
Her strengths are being able to look at the landscape and figure out what’s feasible, who’s needed, what needs to be done, what’s not working, how to make progress in this session. She’s helped finish the Clean Air Oregon Program, helped to get Cap & Trade and Diesel phase-out bill for the Portland area passed in the House, and removed ‘very old’ trans-phobic language that has been in law for a long time and others were afraid to tackle.