•From the Executive Director• Penny Shelton, PharmD, BCGP, FASCP
Legislative Process: A New Olympic Sport?
If you’ve been paying attention, and hopefully you have; then you know that we have been embroiled in a difficult legislative session. To partially draw from a Winston Churchill quote, there have been “tears, toil, and sweat”, in spades. When Churchill spoke these words, in his first address, as Prime Minister, to the House of Commons, England was at war, and Churchill had the daunting task of rallying their nation. Obviously, NCAP is not at war, but make no bones about it, we are currently in a legislative battle here at home. I am not going to go into the details of each of the pieces of legislation that we are working on in the General Assembly; for this information, I will refer you to our Legislative & Policy Update newsletters. Instead, I want to focus on a few lessons learned in our battle for greater authority for pharmacists, and better access to care for patients. Many of you are anxiously awaiting the airing of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Playfully, I couldn’t help but think about political competition, and if our legislative process was an Olym-
pic sport, what would it entail? Perhaps to spectators, it would look something like the combination of a marathon, hurdles and intermittent sprints, with a several rounds of boxing, and an occasional long jump thrown in. Similar to every competitive athlete, primary bill sponsors (legislators), have a strategy for how they will compete, or in our case, run our bills. Sometimes, while ‘the race’ is being run, they have to adjust their strategy. At times bills move very quickly, other times very slowly, worse case no movement at all. I, not unlike many of our members, can become impatient with the process, or befuddled by the suddenness of scheduling before a committee. Essentially, we want things to make sense. We want victory. We want our bills passed. We want success!
Therefore, the first take-away, or lesson learned, is to not lose patience; remember the process is a marathon, an ordeal, a battle. Equally important, is to not let the slowness of the process steal your enthusiasm for the issue. As time passes, we can become disengaged, our voice goes silent. We cannot let this happen, not with what we have on the line. Our issues are too important! Page 3
Every bill has to clear a number of committees. These committees are the ‘hurdles’ in the strange-but-weirdly stated Olympic sport analogy. The boxing rounds represent the battle that happens with groups who are partially or fully opposed to the bill. Compromise occurs throughout, and the give and take leads to successes and failures all along the way. We enter with a bill that outlines what we want and think is best; but in navigating the lengthy legislative process, it is rare to end up with everything we want. The second take-away, or lesson learned is to celebrate our gains in the process, and view the losses as opportunities, instead of failures. We may not get everything that we seek, but our experience with each bill can help us identify better strategies and tactics for future attempts. As an example, we knew it was important to have legislators, who are members of the party in power, and who are also chairpersons for issue-relevant committees, to serve as our primary sponsors. However, we have learned during this session, that it is equally important, to select primary sponsors who are passionate about the bill issue; because if they are, then they will work hard to bring
