HOW TO GET YOUR LAW PASSED

...The Connecticut House of Representatives buried the measure—without a tombstone...

...You can come back in succeeding sessions to improve the details in the direction of your long-range goal...

...However, a few well-written and sincere letters can be just as effective...

...The best approach is to seek out the capitol reporter covering your type of story and educate him on the merits of your bill...

...Three — Have your bill drafted clearly and accurately...

...It would be helpful, of course, to have your bill sponsored by a leader of the dominant party...

...Five—Early in the session endeavor to commit individual legislators to your measure...

...Above all, if one of your group makes a public statement, get it in writing and hand it to the reporters...

...Likewise, the sup porters of a measure to control the construction of billboards on limited access highways may improve their chances of success by permitting an exception for those portions of highways which pass through already developed industrial or commercial areas...

...Despite the size of state legislatures, one determined lawmaker, vigorously fighting for a measure and willing to take on all foes, can do much to achieve its passage...

...Take absolutely nothing for granted...

...Moreover, you must follow your bill into the governor's office...

...As a consequence, citizen groups have a free opportunity to influence individual legislators...

...Then each legislator has great bargaining power with the leadership, and some will try to exact a price for their votes on important administration measures...

...Two—Endeavor to commit both political parties to your specific measure at the time they are making up their campaign platforms...

...Every legislator received a blizzard of letters on the issue...

...Thus, your rebuttal can be relevant and directed at the proper target...

...Four—Get proper sponsorship for your measure...

...it can literally vanish...

...Later in the session, as the number of bills ready to be voted on mounts and the leaders become concerned whether the legislature will complete its work before adjournment, the consideration of bills becomes more casual and the recommendations of committees are more readily accepted...

...All sorts of pressure may be swirling around it...

...When the legislature convened six months later, both parties were com-pletly committed to the measure...

...Letters should be brief, relevant, and factual...

...Ten—After your bill has passed one branch of the legislature, follow it through the other and into the governor's office...

...If he gets public recognition for the bill, he will fight even harder...

...possibly there may be a political rivalry between the governor and the legislature...

...Direct telephone calls to legislators can also be persuasive...

...The parties as such take no stand on the vast majority of measures before the legislature, such as those relating to the abolition of capital punishment, wire tapping, or comic book censorship...

...They are flattered to have constituents discuss matters with them and enlist their support...

...How much will it cost...

...The importance of obtaining the approval of the legislative committee to which your bill has been referred cannot be overemphasized...

...A legislator can also warn against raising needlessly controversial issues...

...Obviously, this is the time you want your bill to come up...

...After your bill has triumphed over the legislative snares and perils and miraculously has been enacted into law, there is one more thing to do: send letters of thanks to all those who were responsible for its passage...

...Which politically significant groups favor and which oppose the bill...

...They get far more abuse than praise...

...This is the method of flank attack used by the opposition when it cannot frontally defeat your measure...

...The crassest thing that can happen to a bill is for it to be sold out to satisfy the political commitment of an individual legislator...

...There is a great unevenness in the amount of consideration given bills over the span of the session...

...This occurs especially when the strength of the parties in either branch of the legislature is almost equal...

...Although this does not necessarily assure the leader's active support, it carries weight with lesser legislators who will assume he favors the measure...

...He will not take the sole responsibility for killing a bill after it has passed both houses if his veto will kick up a storm...

...The wise approach is to draft the specific measure your organization favors and then try to get the precise operative language into the party platform...

...or the governor may have a personal antipathy to a particular measure...

...They represent one of the most vigorous aspects of our democracy in action—citizens participating directly in the legislative process...

...At the outset, before tensions mount, legislators are easy to approach...

...many measures are put on a non-controversial calendar and passed without debate...

...A legislator should be approached by the citizens of the town or district from which he has been elected...

...Occasionally, you must limit your proposal to less than your conception of the perfect law...

...The art of politics, of course, is the art of the possible and the art of compromise...

...But it does require planning, persistence, and persuasiveness...

...A firm commitment obtained early from a legislator generally will be honored when the vote is taken...

...For in that arena, the political parties are supreme...

...Furthermore, they got the pledge into the platforms of both the Democratic and Republican Parties...

...Their platform committees will seriously consider almost any proposal which has the support of a substantial group of voters...

...However, by far the best sponsor is the competent legislator who wholeheartedly supports your measure and is willing to battle for it...

...These are: What is the public interest...

...Incurring additional and irrelevant opposition to the capital punishment bill was a tactical mistake which could have been avoided by counseling with a helpful legislator...

...However, within this highly charged political atmosphere, groups of public-spirited citizens do have a genuine opportunity to influence the course of legislation...

...What other states have similar laws and how have they worked out...

...Many important laws have been and will be enacted because of the persistence of private citizens who know how to operate in the legislature and, to their surprise, have learned how to play politics...

...If a veto is in the wind, you can let the governor know of the strong sentiments of your group by letter, by a delegation to his office, and by newspaper publicity...

...Legislators regularly read newspapers, first, to look for their names, and, secondly, to find out what's going on in the legislature...

...Or it may be the pie-in-the-sky type which purports to improve the bill beyond your fondest hopes, but utterly destroys its chances of passage...

...The calls were made by local voters, who were sincerely outraged at the bill...

...At the time your measure comes up for debate, have a delegation of your group in the gallery...

...The most common hazard a bill faces is that it will be bartered away for a vote on a major party matter...

...For a legislature rarely disposes of all of its bills before it adjourns...

...Accordingly, the group was advised to withhold the document...

...Nine—Keep in touch with the status of your bill right up until the time of the vote...

...He may get away but he is going to have to do some wriggling...

...Their programs are the main business of the legislature...

...In most legislatures the ideas for proposed laws must be submitted in the technical form of a bill...

...Above all, it requires a clear understanding of how the legislature operates, so that the most efficient use is made of limited time, money, and energy...

...Visionary ideas for improving or reforming your state are fine...

...They crowd the corridors, pack the public hearings, and lavish the legislators with literature...

...The first few telegrams sent to legislators are impressive but later in the session they are not worth the cost...

...This type of publicity should never be left to chance...

...The first rule is to make your presentation relevant to the standards a committee applies in deciding a bill...

...Or the amendment may be a purely dilatory tactic to delay a final vote on the bill itself until more of the opposition is present...

...Six—The best approach is direct personal contact with the legislators but letters, telephone calls, and newspaper publicity can be effective...

...The amendment may be the disembowelling type, which leaves only the meaningless form of the bill...

...This is particularly true if the senate is controlled by a different party...

...It is helpful if your legislative friends can arrange to have the vote on your measure come up late, but not too late, in the session...

...They insisted upon a specific promise to prohibit discrimination by the owners of five or more housing units...

...In the senate there will be new forces at play...

...For example, you cannot assume that because your bill has passed the house, it will automatically pass the senate...

...I have also seen the shining light of their idealism swallowed up in the political jungle of the legislature...

...A simple four-line letter of appreciation sent by the president of the state garden clubs to the chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party, after the passage of the billboard control bill, was thought sufficiently important to be multi-copied and forwarded to all the Democratic legislators...

...Marshaling the forces favorable to an organization's measure, blunting the thrusts of the opposition, and achieving the transformation of a proposed bill into an enacted law is an art...

...It is extremely important that it be done well...

...For example, those seeking to abolish capital punishment have sometimes found it expedient to present a bill which does not provide for an absolute ban, but allows capital punishment for ROBERT SATTER, a lawyer, recently completed a term in the Connecticut legislature...

...The important thing is to get the principle, the essence of the idea enacted...

...The most tortuous thing that can happen to a bill is for it to be amended...

...Since the constitutional question had never come up in the committee's deliberations, the brief, excellent as it was, would have created doubts where none existed...

...Who will benefit...

...The victory achieved that day in the legislature had been won many months before, at the start of the political campaign—when it is often easiest to win...

...Draftsmanship is so important that even if your group is operating on a limited budget, it is worth hiring an experienced craftsman to do the job right...

...During sessions of the state legislature, leaders of these groups converge on the state capitol, determined to get the idea closest to their hearts enacted into law...

...It was the massiveness of the attack, the sheer weight of numbers that won...

...The proponents of a bill to abolish capital punishment entwined their measure in the legislators' minds with a bill to repeal the Connecticut birth control law, the single most controversial issue in the General Assembly...

...Again new forces exist...

...Although the political parties dominate the legislature, they exercise their power on only a relatively few major bills...

...The mangled newspaper quote is a despairing experience, and almost never reparable...

...For example, a bill can accidentally get lost...

...You would be surprised to know how pleased politicians are to receive letters of thanks...

...the killers of prison guards and kidnaped children...

...I remember with amusement a telephone campaign organized by the members of a large cemetery association in opposition to a bill which would have prohibited cemeteries from selling tombstones...

...Trying to get a law enacted is playing "politics," whether or not you like the word...

...Favorable newspaper publicity on your bill is always helpful...

...They should also be original...

...All their time and effort are more than rewarded by the excitement of participating directly in the workings of democracy and by the satisfaction of knowing that the law they help to pass will be a living contribution to the people of their state...

...A governor is usually sensitive to public pressure...

...Although legislators will listen politely to anyone, they give eager attention to voters from their own area...

...Eight—Work through a legislator on the committee deciding your bill, and take his advice...

...From P.T.A.'s to church councils, from garden clubs to civil liberties organizations, virtually every volunteer group has a "legislative" or "social action" committee...

...In the 1959 session of the Connecticut legislature, the governor, because of pressures exerted on him by the state police, killed an excellent bill, which sought to prohibit the introduction into evidence of an unconstitutionally obtained confession...

...Take nothing for granted...

...Strange things happen to bills...

...Moreover, they are more likely to have an open mind and to consider the bill on its merits than they might later in the session when party pressures may build up around your measure...

...Often, it is done with unctuous solicitude...

...A buttonholed legislator is like a fish on the hook...

...The most telling letter campaign in the 1959 session of the Connecticut legislature was conducted by the garden clubs in support of a measure controlling the erection of billboards on limited access highways...

...Your bill is only one of hundreds being considered by a committee...

...But when you come to translate them into a legislative program for which you are willing to spend time and money, you must be practical and concrete...

...Such a simple gesture builds incalculable good will for the next legislative proposal you undertake...

...However, if your bill is left to the very end of the session, there is always the danger it will not be considered...

...Who will be hurt...

...Since a legislator receives a great deal of mail each day, his attention span is short...

...If your group cannot talk to the legislators personally, then you have to get your message to them by mail or telephone or through the newspapers...

...The struggle to get bills passed, like all contests, has its ground rules...

...It is the rally cry to action of innumerable citizen organizations throughout the land...

...A friendly legislator can tell whether an agreement has been reached in committee on your bill so that more effort on your part will not only be unnecessary but could create a hostile reaction...

...This price may take the form of party support for the passage of a bill they favor or for the defeat of a bill they oppose...

...Of the more than 3,000 bills filed in the 1959 session of the Connecticut legislature, not a single measure was enacted into law without a favorable committee report...

...At the time of the political conventions in June, 1958, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights groups did not settle for a pious plank in a party platform on the righteousness of equal opportunity for all races...

...It does not require the hiring of highly-priced lobbyists...

...Their presence will not only give your legislator friends the audience they love to play to, but will also give them the moral encouragement to fight even harder for your bill...

...To public-spirited citizens interested in being effective in a state legislature, I recommend the following guides to action: One—Distill from your notions of good legislation a proposal that is both feasible and specific...

...Moreover, get it into the platforms of both parties...

...The barrage started suddenly one afternoon, and for two days the phones of legislators didn't stop ringing...

...there is often the normal conflict between the executive and legislative branches of government...

...The public hearing is your opportunity to state your case to this important decision-making body...

...They did this by publicizing that the same Protestant church groups supported both bills...

...The drafting of bills is a specialized skill...

...The only way to overcome these assaults on your bill is to keep constantly informed on its status during each stage of its travail through the the legislature and to be prepared to act instantly and effectively when attempts are made to destroy or cripple it...

...He can also tell you when a .bill is faltering in committee so that you may step up your public activity and solicit additional support...

...There was no way they could avoid their clear election promise...

...For example, the group supporting the housing anti-discrimination bill in the Connecticut legislature wanted to circulate to the members of the committee a memorandum on the constitutionality of the measure...

...You will need new supporters and face new opposition...

...The critical challenge is to translate enthusiastic citizen support into legislative accomplishments...

...This is the real story behind the enactment, in the 1959 session of the Connecticut legislature, of a civil rights law which prohibits racial discrimination in the sale or rental of private housing by the owners of five or more units...

...The same form letter sent by members of an organization is resented as an insult to the intelligence of the legislator...

...The parties are never more amenable than at the start of a political campaign...

...numerous questions are raised and amendments suggested, and the debate goes on interminably...

...The governor's veto can determine the fate of a bill, particularly if he exercises it after the legislature has adjourned...

...Every time a poorly written bill must be amended in the legislature, its chances of passage are substantially reduced...

...As a representative in the Connecticut state legislature, I have watched these sincere and high-minded people try to make their influence felt...

...Although individual legislators opposed the bill, the political leaders exerted the full measure of party discipline when the time for a vote came...

...The early bills are meticulously examined by the eager legislators...

...He can advise as to the questions raised about the measure and the source of the opposition...

...Seven—Be fully prepared for the public hearing on your bill...

...Bills are not submitted to the legislature by private citizens but must be introduced by a legislator...