News

SGA Coalition Call Notes are below and can also be downloaded (doc).

Attendees:

• April Putney – Futurewise (WA)
• Mary Kyle McCurdy – 1000 Friends of Oregon
• Adam Garcia – Greenbelt Alliance (CA)
• Barb Thoman – Transit for Livable Communities (MN)
• Chrissy Nichols – Metropolitan Planning Council (IL)
• Abby Gardner, Rayla Bellis, Elisa Ortiz, Beth Zgoda – SGA

DOT Fiscal Crisis National Report Release

• The national report is one piece of a bigger project we’ve been working on since September 2010; we produced 50 state-specific profiles with recommendations previously.
• This report focuses on repair and maintenance; states have been building new roads at the expense of repair, states can prevent higher costs later on by fixing roads now. Report identifies state lane miles added, how much they are spending on repair and new capacity; the cost of bringing roads into good condition. Report has suggestions for how Congress can direct money to help state DOTs spend better so there will be some inside the Beltway work.
• Release date has been changed to June 1. In mid-May we will send out release materials to everyone. Some states will be identified for more specific state “pushes” – once we identify those states, we will notify you and work together. If you want to push this out, we will provide a template letter to the editor, op-ed and press release for you to use and drop your state-specific info into. We will let you know about target states soon, 10 or less.
• National release: SGA will have a conference call open to the press on June 1, featuring reps from SGA, advisory board members (former DOT directors) and other national partners. We will go over the report info, then will take questions from the press. There will also be a web release featuring a clickable map with state specific reports, links to key information and more.
• One other note: T4A is releasing the second iteration of their Dangerous by Design report on May 24; we are working together with them to make sure we don’t overburden state partners; they will target bike/ped and health groups to lead on this release, but you are welcome to participate as well.
• Questions:
  • What years does the report cover? 2004-2008
  • Does the report address the issue of transparency in terms of reporting how funds are spent (states reporting projects as “repair” when they’re actually simultaneously expanding the roads and bridges)? No it does not, though FHWA breaks out spending on reconstruction into “reconstruction – added capacity” and “reconstruction – no added capacity;” hopefully that would tend to differentiate between the types of repair projects
• Who is interested in releasing this report?
  • Barb at TLC wants to co-release, work together on their report with more updated data
  • Adam Garcia – Transform is probably the best bet as a release partner
  • Mary Kyle – 1000 Friends might be interested
  • Chrissy – so much going on right now, it would be hard to do a release

Lobby Day Report Back

We had a successful coalition meeting and lobby day including almost 100 lobbying visits. The notes are on the coalition website, including a PowerPoint with information on recent polling on sustainable communities and transportation.

Talking points to deal with Tea Partiers (Abby)

At public meetings about planning issues, there have been disruptions by newer activists (Tea Partiers); a coalition member contacted us for help on how to deal with tea party people interrupting meetings.

We worked to identify various arguments against planning including climate change denial, property rights, etc., then wrote talking points on how to respond to those things. The arguments will vary based on the community but we wanted to make it as accessible and usable as possible since many people seem to be interested in this. We are looking for feedback to see which arguments worked best to diffuse arguments for this particular coalition member.

If you’re interested in getting the talking points, contact Abby. We can try to help customize the talking points for you.

• April is interested in seeing the generic talking points

Next Coalition Call

Thursday, May 26 @ 4pm Eastern