THE SIERRA CLUB GRASSROOTS NETWORK YEAR-END GRANT REPORT

01/01/2017 – 12/31/2017

Your Team: Wildlands/Borderlands Grassroots Network DC Lobby Week

Your Name: Harry Romberg

Your Contact Info: Email: HBRomb@aol.com Telephone: 206-365-9302

Total Grant Funds Received in 2017: $12,000

I. GOAL AND PROSPECTIVE OUTCOMES Please include the goals and outcomes from your team’s proposal.

These goals were copied directly from our application. It should be noted that they were

compiled before we knew what issues or contacts would be most relevant at the time we were

in DC or even who our lobbyists would be or what relationships they may already have

fostered. However, our anticipation was pretty good and most of these issues were indeed

relevant topics.

• Lobby members of Congress in support of Wilderness and good public lands legislation and against bad measures – Goal Met

• Lobby members of Congress for permanent authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and full funding thereof – Goal Met

• Lobby members of Congress in support of the Endangered species Act and other protective measures and against legislation which may weaken it – Goal Met

• Lobby members of Congress in support of the Antiquities Act – Goal Met • Lobby members of Congress for good border policy and against bad borderlands

legislation, likely a particular area of focus in the new Congress – Goal Met

• Lobby members of Congress for sensible energy development where we will emphasize disastrous impacts to our public lands from fossil fuel extraction – Goal Met

• Depending on funding (which affects how many people we can invite and therefore the number of meetings we can schedule), assuming we invite the full 12-14 person

contingent, we should be able to schedule 60 to 70 meetings. – Goal Met

• We will seek to develop or enhance relationships between both Sierra Club DC staff and the local lobby team members and their Chapters with Senate and House Members (and

their staff). This will be useful not only on the specific lobby topics but also in the future

on a broader range of issues. – Goal Met

• Meet with public land agency leads who o Can provide useful information to our local and national work. o Need educated on our local and national work. o We need to build relationships with locally and nationally.

– Goal Not Met – Meeting with public land agency leads during this

administration is exceedingly difficult because Sierra Club as a whole does not

have the access they customarily are given, and our individual members do not

have the relationships with current leadership that they have had in the past.

Quite unfortunately, the value of such meetings under this administration would

be extremely limited.

Our organizational goals for lobby weeks always include recruiting from a wide range of

states either where there are particularly relevant issues or where those states have members

on important House or Senate Committees. We recruited 14 people from 10 different states

(see below) targeted by the Lands Team as especially critical to our work. As well as being

geographically diverse, our lobby team was age, ethnically, gender and Sierra Club tenure

diverse.

II. MOST SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT Describe in one concise paragraph your most significant project accomplishment. It is important

to state precisely the Sierra Club’s role in achieving the accomplishment and to explain its

significance.

It is difficult to quantify the significance of any particular aspect of the Lobby Week. It can

rarely be determined that this effort singularly moves (or defeats) legislation but we DO

influence individual members of Congress on the issues we raise. One of our main purposes is to

increase the effectiveness of the Club’s Lands Team by members of Congress and their staff

seeing people from their state lobbying with Lands Team members on issues the Lands Team

pushes all the time thus realizing that the Lands Team actually represents a segment of their own

constituents. Our lobby frequently introduces Lands Team members to higher level staff

members, particularly in swing and opposition offices, and sometimes the members themselves.

That has helped the Lands Team establish relationships and grow their sphere of influence.

That said, we had 61 scheduled meetings (and at least a dozen more unscheduled), including

member meetings with 3 Senators and 9 House members. Shortly after our congressional

meetings, several targeted Congressmen who hadn’t already signed on to the legislation to

reauthorize and fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the new Congress (but had in the

last Congress) finally did so.

We also feel that by introducing our own lobby team members to this effort, we increase their

comfort level in continuing a dialogue with their members of Congress post lobby. The

knowledge and skills gained during the lobby result in people going home knowing that they

CAN have a conversation and represent their views – and those of the Sierra Club – to their

members of Congress. That is very empowering and important to our ongoing lands protection

work. Thus, we believe that lobbies increase participant activism now and in the future, though

this is difficult to quantify.

Accomplishments we feel of particular importance include that this lobby week was a prelude

which helped to set up subsequent lobby efforts. There was a Borderlands lobby conducted a

few months after ours as well as another Borderlands lobby week scheduled for this November.

Our effort also supplemented ongoing efforts to reauthorize and fund the Land and Water

Conservation Fund, led by Wildlands volunteer Vicky Hoover in conjunction with numerous

staff and the Lands Team. We built momentum for the coalition Land and Water Conservation

Fund lobby that took place two weeks after our lobby. All of these efforts are built upon past

work and will continue until our goals are accomplished.

III. PROGRESS ON OTHER OUTCOMES Describe other notable project outcomes in a few paragraphs. Describe what you did and how

you did it so that an audience with no prior knowledge can understand it (committees are named,

acronyms spelled out). State the result of the work, along with its current status at the time of the

report.

We lobbied against 2 Congressional Review Act administrative rules approved by the previous

Administration that the Republican Congress was trying to repeal.

• The Predator Rule in the House, providing for congressional disapproval would eliminate the final rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Non-Subsistence

Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife

Refuges in Alaska.

• The Methane Rule, which advances common sense measures to reduce methane emissions on public and tribal lands through preventing wasteful leaks, venting, and

flaring of gas and dangerous pollutants.

The former ended up passing (meaning that the rule was rescinded) and the latter was defeated.

• We lobbied in support of the reauthorization and funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

• We lobbied against the Border Wall in particular the new Administration’s efforts to fund and build it. In particular, we lobbied against HR837 and HR739.

As noted earlier, these efforts supplemented subsequent lobbying and other efforts.

• We lobbied in support of our National Monuments and against changes to the Antiquities Act, in particular Bears Ears. At that time, the Zinke directive was not yet in place but

this helped lay the groundwork for later efforts as well.

• We continued to lobby for designation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness (or at least against efforts to drill there) as well as other potential Wilderness

areas.

• We lobbied for treating wildfire as a natural disaster, treating it just like any other natural disaster, making federal disaster funds available instead of draining the Forest Service’s

budget every year to fight fire and so that they can’t do the rest of their job.

• We also generally lobbied against expected attacks on the Endangered Species Act. • We lobbied for a clean budget that protects key environmental programs like the Land

and Water Conservation Fund, the National Park Service and other public lands and

wildlife.

None of these issues were really new, although the change in Administration made them more

urgent than ever. In great part, they are ongoing efforts.

A number of our lobby week volunteers who weren’t already engaged in lobbying at that time,

were able to attend a briefing session on the re-introduced land and water fund reauthorization

bill.

In addition to items mentioned in section II above and IV below, in at least one case in

Washington, this lobbyist was invited to a local gathering organized by the Congressional staffer

when she visited the district.

Also in Washington, a House member who had not yet co-sponsored the Land and Water

Conservation Fund legislation in this Congress did so subsequent to our lobby week reminder.

This likely happened elsewhere as well but was not reported.

IV. GRASSROOTS CAPACITY - How many people have you engaged? How have you built your team/support for your issue/project?

• # of people on your Core Team:_3_

o Please attach a list of your Core Team members

Harry Romberg (WWT)

Jill Workman (WWT & Borderlands)

Julie Shipp (WWT & Borderlands)

• # of additional leaders (someone who has spoken for the team, helped coordinate a team

efforts or mobilized other volunteers):_14___

As all participants spoke for the Sierra Club with their Senators and Congressional

Representatives, we consider them to be leaders. In addition, many of them have

participated in other Sierra Club activities, including the November 2017 Wildlands training

in Seattle. This, in this report, we have identified them as both activists and leaders.

• # of activists (someone who has invested an hour or more of time in an event or activity

related to the Team):_14___

• # of members on Team’s page on the G.N. website (if applicable): All of the attendees

are or were subsequently made members of one or more of the G/N teams associated with

this lobby week effort (Wildlands or Borderlands)

• # of Facebook likes (if applicable): We established a Facebook Event under the

Borderlands Team’s Facebook page again this year and alerted all of our participants but

it was not clear that anyone engaged by this method or of its effectiveness. We may

revisit this if we get future grants.

• # of email list (e.g., listserv, Google Group) participants (if applicable): All members and

the team leads for Wildlands and Borderlands and relevant staff members were included

on a listserv specific to this lobby week and volunteers have been contacted since the

event. This listserv was used to distribute materials leading up to and subsequent to the

lobby week. Most of these folks were added to the Wildlands and/or Borderlands

listservs subsequent to the event.

2017 Lobby Week Volunteers

Lance Holter HI

Sarah Loftus ME

Alvaro Melara IL

Natalie Mermuys NV

Rosemarie Pavel CO

Arthur Rahn TN

Harry Romberg WA

Catalina Ross AZ

Tom Schlipmann IL

Julie Shipp TX

Lana Sutton TN

Susan Thomas AZ

Jackeline Trevino TX

Jill Workman OR

One of our lobby week volunteers, Sarah Loftus, subsequently became a Lands Team intern,

furthering her involvement. She also had a letter to the editor published shortly after our lobby

week, http://www.pressherald.com/2017/04/10/letter-to-the-editor-presidents-border-wall-an-

ecological-economic-threat/

Meeting with Rep. Schneider (IL-10)

One of our IL lobbyists, Alvaro Melara(third from left above), has subsequently become an in-

state staffer for Congressman Schneider.

All of these volunteers were invited to apply for the October 2017 Wildlands training in Seattle.

Three applied and were accepted (Alvaro, Catalina and Susan). The Wildlands Team’s

Mentoring Sub-Team is reaching out to those who are new to lands work to invite them to

participate in our Mentoring Program.

V. LOOKING AHEAD Conclude with a brief paragraph discussing the project’s future direction and upcoming

challenges. Explain how the recent accomplishments have prepared you(us) to take advantage of

future opportunities.

Given continued Grassroots Network support, we hope to continue an annual lobby week. We

find that doing so increases Sierra Club visibility in congressional offices and in some cases the

relationships developed by individual participants also helps to enhance the work of staff who

interact with those offices on a regular basis. It is also an incentive for local activists who feel

empowered by the experience and hopefully become more active in the Sierra Club or feel

rewarded for work they’ve been doing. Relationships formed during lobby weeks have helped

the Sierra Club locally and nationally make progress on our initiatives and win tremendous

victories in land protection. Increased networking due to a wider knowledge of people and

issues is an additional result.

VI. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Please feel free to attach any additional information relevant to this project, for example, photos

of events held, informational materials produced, links to news stories/media your work

generated, etc.

For the past several years, we have been trying to increase our capacity by recruiting Sierra Club

members in DC to act as volunteer hosts to some of our lobby team members. Jim Dougherty

has been particularly helpful in this regard, having helped us find several hosts. In fact, this is

the first year we have been able to house our entire lobby team with volunteers, thus avoiding

hotel stays. This year, we also had two volunteers who now have helped us for 3 years (Rick

Nunno and Payton Chung).

In another encouraging development, after having talked with their lobby week guest and

attending our thank-you dinner, one of our hosts expressed interest in participating as a lobbyist

in a future lobby week.

On the first day of every lobby week, the Land Team spends a half-day training us on the issues

we will be lobbying on as well as providing lobby tips, particularly for those new to the Hill.

Even for those of us who have lobbied before, this is always a helpful reminder and orientation

to current issues before Congress.

This year, we again had a Team thank-you dinner that we try to host every year. Those invited

include those lobbying, our volunteer hosts and anyone from the Lands Team who can join us.

Natalie & Jill lobbying on the Senate side

The Borderlands Team lobbying Congressman Vela

Borderlands Team in the halls of Congress