legislative_advocacy v1.0.0

name: "legislative_advocacy" description: "Run a legislative advocacy effort on one named bill: track it stage by stage with a tracker template and CLI, build a sourced vote count, write written and oral testimony that fits the committee's own rules, brief staff meetings with a one page brief, file public comments that enter the record, and log every contact and outcome. Use when someone is lobbying for or against a bill, preparing for a hearing, counting votes before a floor or committee vote, or running a session long campaign in Congress, a state legislature, or a council."

Legislative Advocacy

Purpose

Move one named bill toward a named outcome, and keep the work organised enough that nothing depends on memory. A bill campaign is a chain of small deadlines set by other people: a clerk's filing window, a chair's amendment offer, a staffer's request for a number by Friday. Miss one and the bill moves without you.

This skill covers the inside work on a specific bill: tracking its stage, counting votes, testifying, meeting staff, filing comments, and logging contacts. Supporter mobilisation, petitions, and action alerts are a separate job. Candidate campaigns, election work, and legal advice are out of scope. The worked example in references/worked-campaign.md is fictional and shows the full run from introduction to a floor vote.

Workflow

1. Set the campaign file before anything moves

Write down, in the tracker, before the first meeting:

• The bill: number, title, chamber, sponsor, committee of referral, and the text version you are working from, with the date you pulled it.
• The position: support, oppose, or support with named amendments. A position without the amendment list is not finished.
• The outcome wanted this session, in one sentence, plus the fallback the campaign would accept and the red line it would not.
• The decision calendar: session dates, committee days, filing and signup deadlines, and any budget or adjournment deadline that can kill the bill by silence.
• The owner: one named person who keeps the tracker current.

Start the tracker from references/bill-tracker-template.csv and the contact log from references/contact-log-template.csv. Run the tracker check weekly, and daily once a hearing or vote is scheduled:

python3 scripts/bill_tracker.py check tracker.csv python3 scripts/bill_tracker.py whip whip.csv --needed 51 python3 scripts/bill_tracker.py log contacts.csv

2. Track the bill by stage, and work the stage you are in

Use these stages in the tracker. The federal order is shown. State chambers run the same shape with local names, readings instead of some steps, and one chamber only in Nebraska, which is unicameral.

1. pre_intro: drafted or requested, not yet filed. Work: sponsor recruitment, drafting fixes, the cost answer.
2. introduced: filed and numbered. Work: confirm the official text and referral.
3. referred: sitting in committee. Work: chair and committee staff, hearing request. Most bills end here by inaction. A hearing is not required for a bill to advance, and the committee chair holds the main agenda setting power, so the ask at this stage is about scheduling as much as merit.
4. hearing: a hearing is set or held. Work: testimony, in section 4.
5. markup: the committee is amending the bill. Work: amendment language, committee vote count, answers to members' conditions inside the window they give you.
6. reported: voted out of committee, with a report and usually a fiscal note or cost estimate. Work: read the report for changes you did not see in the room.
7. floor: scheduled for debate and vote in the chamber. Work: the full whip count, in section 5.
8. passed_chamber: through one chamber. The other chamber starts again at referral with its own committee and its own politics. Open a fresh count.
9. other_chamber and conference: the second chamber's stages, then reconciliation when the two texts differ. Both chambers must pass identical text. Work: track every difference between the versions in the tracker notes, line by line.
10. enrolled, signed, vetoed, law, dead: sent to the executive, then signed, vetoed, or allowed to become law under that chamber's rules. A veto override takes a higher threshold than passage in most chambers. Get the exact number from the clerk or the chamber rules before planning around it.

After every official action, update the stage, the next action, and the date the same day, and record what actually happened, not what was expected. Congress.gov carries federal bill actions and text. State legislatures publish their own action lists. Work from those records, never from a news summary.

3. Read the bill like staff read it

Before advocating, produce a one page bill read:

• What it does, section by section, with section numbers.
• Definitions that control scope, exceptions, and who is left out.
• Money: appropriation, funding source, and what the fiscal note or cost estimate says, quoted with its date.
• Administration: which agency or office runs it, and what they must do by when.
• Dates: effective date, reporting dates, sunsets.
• The three strongest objections, stated fairly. You will meet all three in committee.

If you cannot get the current text, say so and stop. Advocating from a summary or an old version is how campaigns promise things the bill does not contain.

4. Testify and comment, in the format the body sets

Full structures are in references/testimony-and-comments.md. The load bearing rules:

• Pull the committee rules, the hearing notice, and any witness instructions first. Filing deadlines for written testimony vary by committee, from 24 hours to two business days in House committees checked for this skill, and a chair can exclude a late witness. There is no standard deadline or page limit to fall back on.
• Written testimony leads with the position in the first paragraph, brings district or state impact with sourced figures, speaks section by section, and ends with a specific ask, including amendment requests a committee can act on.
• Oral testimony is a separate, shorter document. Write to 80 percent of the stated time limit, rehearse with a timer, and never read the written statement aloud. Several House committees cap opening statements at five minutes. State public testimony is often two or three minutes. Confirm the limit in the notice.
• A nongovernmental House witness files a CV and a Truth in Testimony disclosure with the written statement. Start the disclosure packet when the invitation arrives.
• Groups testifying in public comment should split points across speakers. Repetition gets cut and stops being heard.
• For a proposed rule instead of a bill, file a public comment under the Regulations.gov checklist rules in the reference file: cite the section you are addressing, bring evidence, propose an alternative when you disagree, and file before the deadline in the notice. A comment enters the legal record of the rule. A form letter does not do that work, so the campaign itself always files one substantive comment.

5. Meet staff, brief in writing, and count votes honestly

Method, brief template, and counting rules are in references/staff-meetings-and-vote-counts.md. The short version:

• Meet the Legislative Assistant who owns the issue first, then the Legislative Director, then committee staff while the bill is in committee. Verify names and titles the week of the meeting.
• Bring what staff say they rarely get: district level impact figures with sources, and one local story tied to the bill, used with permission. Congressional Management Foundation staff surveys found 91 percent of staff called district impact information helpful while only 9 percent received it frequently.
• Leave a one page brief with the ask in the first lines. The brief is what the staffer pastes into the member's memo after you leave.
• State the ask as an action with a date, and close the meeting by naming the follow up you will send and when.
• Build the vote count with fixed labels: yes, lean_yes, undecided, lean_no, no, not_voting, unknown. A position changes only on a new source, recorded with its date. Report firm votes (yes only) and likely votes (yes plus lean_yes) as two numbers, always. Get the passage threshold from the chamber rules or clerk and put it at the top of the sheet. Run the whip subcommand for the gap and the persuasion list.
• Work persuasion in order: undecided members with a district tie, lean_no members whose stated condition you can meet, then lean_yes members who need to become firm. Reconfirm every counted vote in the final week.

6. Log every contact the same day

One row per contact in the contact log: date, office, person, role, contact type, the exact ask made, the outcome in their words where you can, the follow up action, and its date. Vague outcomes ("good meeting") are banned. Record the signal they actually gave ("will review the one pager", "needs the fiscal note first", "member is inclined to support") because the next step differs for each.

Run the log subcommand every week and clear due follow ups before making new contacts. A promised follow up sent late or never is the fastest way to lose a staff relationship, and staff compare notes across offices.

7. Run the endgame and the morning after

In the final week before a vote: reconfirm the count, brief the sponsor's office with both the firm and likely numbers, prepare the amendment and floor answers, and line up the statement for each outcome, pass, fail, or amended, before the vote happens.

Within a day after: record the real vote against the count, name where the count was wrong and why, send thank yous to supporters and a short factual note to opponents who engaged honestly, close or carry every open follow up, and write the one page review while the details are still in the log. That review is the first document of the next campaign.

Output Contract

Every campaign run produces and keeps current:

• The tracker CSV, one row per bill, stage current within one business day of an official action, checked with the tracker script.
• The bill read: one page, section numbers, money, administration, dates, top three objections.
• The one page meeting brief for each target office, in the template format.
• Testimony: a written version filed by the committee's deadline and a separate timed oral version, or a public comment filed in the docket with its confirmation saved.
• The whip sheet per vote, with sourced positions, confirmation dates, the threshold, and firm and likely totals reported separately.
• The contact log, one row per contact, with follow ups dated and cleared or carried.
• After a vote: the recorded result against the count and a one page review.

Operating Rules

1. Verify every factual claim against a primary source: the bill text, the official action list, the committee rules and notice, the fiscal note, the chamber rules. If a figure cannot be traced, cut it from outward material. Staff cut untraceable numbers from their memos, and they remember who sent them.
2. Never invent a position for a member or a staffer. Signals are logged as signals, with the source and the words used. A friendly meeting is not a yes.
3. Keep the count, the contact log, and internal assessments private to the campaign. Do not publish a whip count or share one office's signals with another office.
4. Use a person's story or name only with permission, written down. Withdraw it the moment permission is withdrawn, including from already drafted testimony where filing has not happened.
5. Check the legal lines before scaling up, and get counsel where they apply. This skill is not legal advice. Three regimes come up most:

• Federal lobbying disclosure: under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, an individual who makes more than one lobbying contact and spends at least 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities for a client or employer in a quarter can meet the definition of a lobbyist, which carries registration with the Clerk of the House and the Secretary of the Senate and quarterly reporting. Dollar thresholds in the current guidance change over time, so check the current Lobbying Disclosure Guidance before relying on any figure.
• Tax exempt organisations: a 501(c)(3) may not make lobbying a substantial part of its activities under the default test. Eligible public charities can elect the expenditure test under section 501(h) by filing IRS Form 5768, which sets a sliding dollar scale capped at 1,000,000 dollars, with grassroots lobbying limited to 25 percent of the lobbying amount. Churches and private foundations cannot elect it. Track lobbying time and spend in the same log discipline this skill uses for contacts.
• State and local rules: many states and some cities run their own lobbyist registration and reporting systems, with their own definitions and thresholds. Check the registry where the legislature sits before the first contact, not after.

1. Stay inside the campaign's stated position. If the bill changes enough in markup that the position no longer fits, stop, take the new text to whoever owns the position, and get a new instruction before advocating further.
2. No gifts, meals, or anything of value to legislators or staff beyond what the chamber's own ethics rules clearly allow. When in doubt, bring paper and leave it at that.
3. Label illustrative material as illustrative. The worked campaign in the references is fictional. Never present an example figure, quote, or vote as a real one.