Lobby Day in Annapolis

I joined the Montgomery County Women’s Democratic Club for an exciting lobby day in Annapolis yesterday. Leslie Milano did a fantastic job of organizing us and she and her team provided us with all the info we needed to make our point on our bills, with bill descriptions and committee assignments. They also set up appointments for us to meet with our senators and delegates. Fifteen minutes to convince them – pretty easy for District 18 folks, as our delegation is already co-sponsoring or supporting our priorities.

We lobbied for a women’s early release center, implementation of and paying for the Kirwin Commission recommendations, ACA-related health care bills to protect Marylanders (just in case the republicans manage to gut the protections at the federal level), gun safety bills, synthetic turf disposal regs., and wage history bills, among others.

(Did you know Maryland schools fell from number one in the nation under Governor O’Malley (a Democrat), to 24th or 25th under Governor Hogan (a republican)? In just 7 short years? The result of 7 years of Hogan’s hatred for public education and unionized teachers.)

We sat in on a session of the senate in Maryland’s historic statehouse, and after lunch we stuck around to watch a senate judiciary hearing as they considered the women’s pre-release center.

Many thanks to District 18 Delegate Emily Shetty and her staff for organizing a terrific lunch, and to the Montgomery County delegation for meeting with us and joining us during lunch to discuss their legislative priorities. And to the WDC committee chairs for their hard work (so informative), and to Diana Edensword Conway for her tireless leadership of the WDC.

Also, a big thanks to my good friend Lisa Henderson for driving! It was so great to spend the day with such awesome women and men!