Legislative issues

Greetings DWCF Orange County Members!

Please sign up to track bills on issues you are interested in. If you have not done this before, the process is posted ABOVE or you can ask your chapter Legislative Liaison to help you with that. Please plan on being active this session by writing “letters to the editors”, etc.

Please mark your calendar: 

August 30 (Monday): Orange County Delegation Meeting, beginning at 9:30 am. This is an all day event, hopefully virtual, certainly broadcast on OrangeTV: 488 on Spectrum, 9 on Comcast or Orange County website live!!   If you want information on speaking at this event, please click here.

All Florida State Legislative Session activities are broadcasted on Orange TV and on the state website:

• September 20: Florida Legislative Committee Weeks begin. 
• January 11: Legislative Session Convenes.

DWCF Members have been asked to prepare to travel to Tally, on a rotating weekly basis by region 1-13, throughout the session, to witness, testify, lobby, etc. as needed. More on this from your Chapter President, Region Chairs and at Convention in September. 

• March 1: 50th Day Rule: Regular Committee meetings stop. 
• March 11: 60th Day: last day of regular session.
  

In the past, I have invited chapter members to track bills and be “subject matter experts”, resources to the chapter, based on areas of interest and expertise. That has not worked so well in the past, so this year, because there is so much at stake, I am asking specific chapter members to be SMEs in the specific areas that I think we will have the most challenging legislative action occurring. 

And I am still inviting members who would like to be involved at that level to let me know, we can’t have too many minds thoughtfully engaged in this endeavor.

As always, please let me know if you have questions or need additional information.

Yolanda Russell,
Legislative Liaison, DWCF WOC
wocseniors@gmail.com

Greetings West Orange County Democratic Women!!!

Happy International Women’s Day, Week and Women’s History Month!!! 

Our 2021 Florida State Legislative Session officially opened last week, although bills have been filed and committee members have been meeting since December. Hundreds of bills are in the pipeline already and this session’s bill count could easily surpass the count of 2020’s Legislative Session. 

As you have probably heard, there will not be a “Tally Days” gathering in Tallahassee this year, but each Monday evening, DWCF does host a meeting with a speaker that shares insight and brings updates from the legislative session. If you are not getting those emails from President Patty Farley, please let us know. 

On Tuesday evenings, the Legislative Liaisons from each chapter meet for updates and DWCF Legislative Chair Jean Siebenaler, follows up those meetings with Action Alerts to Region Chairs and Chapter Presidents to disseminate to members for ACTION!!!! So, please, please watch for those important action alerts and please do take the action requested. And please let our Chapter President Vivian Lyte-Johnson know that you have taken action and provide feedback so we can stay on top of our efforts and impact. 

So far, these collection actions have set back several of these “Bad Bills” from being heard in committee and delayed them coming to the floor, sometimes  slight changes are made in the wording of these bills. We’ll take what we can get at this point. 

What I will be doing is tracking the bills filed by our Orange County Delegation, and sharing those with you for action of SUPPORT.

Yours in The Work that Continues, 
Yolanda Russell, Legislative Liaison 

For any questions or additional information: Please email me at wocseniors@gmail.com