Sara Cline- March 4, 2010

Hello everyone! I'm taking the day off tomorrow to do a Pentagon and Capitol tour, so my post is coming a day early.

This has been a very exciting week. I have been on the Hill with clients three times. On Tuesday I was out with the Pikes (fraternity), who were lobbying on behalf of the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act (which I've talked about a ton). Since I've posted on this topic/lobbying with the Greeks before, I'm not going to go into much detail. The best part was that one of the men on my team (the team was four members of the international executive board and me) was a former Congressman from Indiana (Ed Pease). During the down time between meetings, he told us the ins-and-outs of what it was like as a Congressman. I have been in meetings with Members before, but this experience was truly unique. Since he is a former member, he was able to chat very candidly about anything and everything we were interested in hearing about with regards to Congress.

On Wednesday I was out with Ohio University. We met with their two Senators (Brown and Voinovich) as well as a number of their Representatives. I have so many comments about the experience:
(1) They were asking for money for about ten projects- I don't think I should go into the details of the project, however. While they will not all be funded, they'll get some money. I did some quick research to see what U of I is doing in the way of lobbying, and it seems like not much. Unless they have spent so little on an outside lobbyist that it hasn't had to be reported, they don't have one. In my opinion, having a lobbyist to help a school get money for projects it would otherwise not be able to fund is critical, and something U of I should look into. Unlike other meetings I have gone to, in every single office the Senator or Representative made time to personally meet with us because we were with the President of the University. I talked with my boss about it after, and he said that Members are very interested in talking personally to University Presidents and want to hear about the state of the campus, and help with regards to appropriations as much as they can.
(2) When we went to Senator Voinovich's office, one of his staff members took us to his "hideaway" office to speak with him personally. Voinovich's hideaway office is located directly below the Senate chamber in the Capitol (whereas his office is in one of the Senate office buildings, across the street from the Capitol). It was perhaps 1.5x the size of my bedroom at school and only had room for a small desk, tv, couch and a few chairs. The Senator didn't even have a computer in there! I thought it was the coolest thing ever... It took us about 20 minutes to wind around the tunnels below the Capitol to get to his office, I definitely felt like I was in Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol". Once in the office, the Senator devoted over 30 minutes of his time to talking with OU's leadership about the OU campus and the projects it requested. He was extremely prepared for the meeting, and was familiar with all of the requests beforehand. In the middle of the meeting, he looked up at the TV (which was showing a vote going on in the Senate) and said hold on a minute, I have to go vote. He left the office, and about 2 minutes later we saw him appear on TV to vote, and then he came back down to continue the meeting. That meeting, was one of the best and most interesting meetings I have been in so far.

Today (Thursday), Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority (SORTA) was here to talk to their Sens/Reps about their requests. Unlike OU's projects, SORTA's were very straighforward ($ for hybrid buses, transportation centers, etc). Through the visits, I continued to learn about Appropriations requests, especially for T/HUD (Transportation, Housing and Urban Development).

I'm set to go to the Hill next week as well, so stay tuned for an update on how that goes.