STATE LEGISLATIVE DIRECTORY

New legislation in your state how to be a player

This year’s legislative labors are certain to be especially critical to the way you conduct your trucking business. You can have a powerful effect on the decisions lawmakers make. Are you ready to be a player?

Most state lawmakers will be back to work by the time this issue of LL is published. Here’s four easy steps to making your concerns known to those who shape your state laws.

1. If you don’t know who your elected representatives are, members can call OOIDA’s membership department at 1-800-444-5791 and they’ll look it up for you.
2. Watch Land Line and OOIDA’s web sites (www.landlinemag.com and www.ooida.com) and read LL’s “Legislative Update.”
3. Contact your elected representative and state your concerns. Don’t sit on the sidelines.
4. If you become aware of a new law being proposed in your home state that will affect trucking, call Land Line and request that it be placed on our state legislative watch list.

Many of you have asked for LL to provide a list of state legislature phone numbers. Here it is, with session dates and bill status phones. USE IT!

While many issues important to you will be debated by lawmakers in your own home state, what happens in Washington, DC, during 2002 is certain to be critical to your business and your life. On Jan. 23, the Second Session of the U.S. Congress convened.

According to Capitol Hill’s special mail services office, all mail is requiring at least a 72-hour quarantine as a result of the anthrax contamination. Some is being delivered, but the office reports much of the mail continues to be held for an undetermined period. Until the mail is fully operational again, e-mails and phone calls are the most immediate means of passing your concerns along to your elected representative. When the mail services begin delivering all mail, contacting your lawmaker by letter is the most effective method of contact.
There are only two addresses and one phone number you need to write or to call your lawmakers in Washington, DC.

Your lawmakers in Washington
how to contact them

Telephone number for Congress
(202) 224-4121
The only phone number you need to know!
(This is the Capitol switchboard operator who can transfer your call to any representative or senator's office.)

Addresses
You only need to know one of two addresses to send a letter to your representative or senator no matter who they are!

That's it! You do not need to know what building their office is in or what their room number is. You just need the right zip code and it will get there.

Letters to your lawmakers do not need to be long, complicated or in Shakespearean English to be effective. Simply state the issue you are wriing about, what your position is, and how the issue affects you personally. Use your own words, and clearly print or type your name and address.