Advocacy

Strong cities advocacy guide

AWC is here to help you succeed

The decisions made by the Legislature directly impact your community. AWC is here to support you with the tools and resources you need to advocate effectively for your city. This pocket guide covers essential topics to help you succeed, including:

Understanding the legislative process
Building successful partnerships with legislators
Developing your city’s legislative agenda
Communicating effectively with legislators and residents

For more valuable resources, including fact sheets on priority issues, AWC’s bill tracker, data and resources, and more, visit our other advocacy tools.

Download a PDF version of the guide.

Contact us

Have questions or concerns about a legislative issue or process? We are always happy to help support our member cities. To connect with the advocate who works on a particular issue area, or for general inquiries, find us here.

Work with your legislators

Establish a working relationship with your legislators year-round

Part of your job as a local city or town official is to make sure legislators understand how their decisions in Olympia impact your city and community members. The work you do during the session is only a small part of the story: Building a working relationship with your legislators before you ask for help is crucial, and this requires year-round engagement.

Ask how your legislators prefer to be contacted, request their cell phone number, and confirm that it’s okay to send them text messages.
Arrange periodic meetings or calls throughout the year with your city or a group of cities.
Use the time between legislative sessions (the “interim”) for more relaxed meetings or in-depth discussions.
Take your legislators on a tour of your city, including local infrastructure, housing, or parks projects. Show them the direct impact of state funds and policies.
Share your city’s perspective on pending legislation and keep AWC in the loop. If you don’t communicate about the impacts on your city or town, they will remain unknown.

Develop your city’s legislative agenda—and share it

Sharing your city’s legislative agenda is a simple and effective way to get your legislators’ attention. It’s best to adopt your legislative agenda in the fall and share it before session starts each January.

Keep it short and simple.
Include capital needs along with policy priorities.
Incorporate AWC’s City Legislative Priorities into your agenda.
Make it public. Post it on your city’s website, share it with AWC, put it in your newsletters, and insert it into utility bills.
Work with your local media for coverage.

Talk about your budget

The impacts of state budget and policy decisions on your city or town’s day-to-day operations are not always clear to your legislators—communicating those impacts is critical.

Brief your legislators on your budget as it’s being written. Highlight any long-term sustainability challenges.
Share how you are addressing challenges and opportunities related to issues such as growth, fiscal shortfalls, public safety, housing affordability, infrastructure, climate action, and economic development.
Give specific examples of how actions by the state influence your budget—positively or negatively.
Emphasize the importance of addressing state and local needs collaboratively. Highlight that passing responsibilities to cities without providing necessary funding undermines legislative goals and doesn’t serve the best interests of our shared constituents.

Communicate strategically

Communicate what your city needs, early and often. Frame your city’s issues in a way that legislators can understand and remember.

Don’t just send an email—a personal call or text is often more effective. Speak with your legislator or their legislative assistant and confirm any outcomes in writing.
If your city or town produces a newsletter or other regular communications, share those with your legislators.
Speak up even if you think it may not be necessary or they’ve heard your position before. If legislators don’t hear from you, they may incorrectly assume you don’t care or that the issue has no impact on your community.
Engaging with your legislators on key legislation before cutoff dates is important—that’s when the most action takes place.
Talk publicly about why cities and the state need each other.

Make the most of your interaction

Time with your legislators is often brief, so it’s important to use the time strategically.

Stories stick. Frame your city’s “ask” with a local story about real impacts on your shared constituents. Impacts on people will resonate more than impacts on governmental operations.
Be concise and plan what you want to say in advance.
Offer to provide more detail to staff before or after meetings with your legislators.
Don’t try to cover too much–three to five issues at most.
Don’t complain or blame. Instead, offer constructive alternatives. If the solution involves money, be prepared to be asked how the state should pay for it.
Ask for clear commitments from your legislators to work on your issues. That might mean asking if they will commit to vote a particular way or to work with other parties to find compromises.

Demystifying the legislative process

Stay current on the city-related bills moving through the Legislature and read AWC’s weekly coverage through our new bill tracker.

Bills can be introduced by legislators in either the Senate or House of Representatives and are assigned to a policy committee based on their subject matter.
Many bills don’t progress out of the committee they are assigned to. To move forward, a bill must first be granted a public hearing and then scheduled for action at an “executive session,” where it may be amended and approved or rejected by the committee. Committee chairs play an important role—they have the power to decide if a bill is brought before the full committee.
If the bill has an impact on taxes or spending, it must also go through the same process of hearing and approval in a fiscal committee.
Bills that advance to this point are sent to the powerful Rules Committee, where legislative leadership chooses which bills move ahead to the full legislative body for “floor action.”
Once a bill is moved to the floor by the Rules Committee, the full body may debate and amend the bill before voting on its final passage.
Few bills make it to this point, and those that do must clear all the same hurdles again in the opposite chamber. In addition, both chambers must pass identical bills, which may mean approving amendments made by the other chamber or negotiating differences between bills in a conference committee.
Finally, bills approved by both chambers of the Legislature advance to the Governor. The Governor has the option to sign the bill into law, veto it, or allow it to become law without their signature.

Watch out for cutoff dates – this is when the most action happens. Every year, the Legislature sets deadlines by which bills must advance through stages of the legislative process. Bills that don’t meet these cutoff dates are considered “dead” for the session. But be sure to stay alert until the final day of session, or “sine die,” as there are several procedural moves that can resurrect bills that have failed to survive a cutoff date.

Process tips

Early in the process, don’t be surprised by blank stares if talking to a House member about a Senate bill, or vice versa. So many bills are introduced every year that legislators generally only focus on those that are currently in their chamber.

There are several ways to engage with bills in committee, including: testifying, providing written comments, or choosing to have your support or opposition noted for the legislative record. All of this can even be done online!

There is an old saying that nothing is truly dead in Olympia until sine die (the end of session). Several strategies can save bills that have failed to meet a cutoff date, so it’s important to stay engaged to the very end.

Talk publicly about why cities and the state need each other

Preserve local voices in decision-making

The ability of local residents to shape the policies affecting their lives through their city council has long been a cornerstone of governance in Washington state. However, there has been a recent rise in proposals that would shift the balance of decision-making to the state. If your city has concerns about these shifts, it’s crucial to engage with your legislators to ensure local voices remain central to decision-making.

Don’t frame the discussion in terms of “local control” for control’s sake. Instead, stress the importance of empowering communities to have input on decisions that affect them.
Use the term “community-based decision-making” and highlight the importance, and benefit, of community engagement.
Explain why your shared constituents will have better outcomes if they retain the ability to raise and address issues through local government, which can be more nimble and responsive.
Describe local circumstances or nuances that could be lost if statewide approaches do not retain significant local flexibility around implementation.

Communicate with your constituents. If you aren’t, who is?

You and your legislators have the same constituents. Make sure your residents know how decisions made in Olympia impact city services—no one else can do this.

Communicate with your constituents through city council meetings, public access TV, social media, and newsletters.
Ensure that community groups know the full story.
While communicating disagreements with legislators, remember: frustrations are natural, but you’re more likely to reach your goals by assuming good intentions and being respectful.
Build on your reputation as a trusted information source by regularly updating your website with the latest news and actively sharing posts on social media, ensuring residents hear information directly from you first.

Don’t accept excuses–here are some helpful rebuttals

Here’s a list of common refrains we’ve heard over the years, along with sample rebuttals you can use to counter them.

“I’m not on the committee.”

Your legislator’s job is to fight for your district! They need to advocate for your interests with colleagues who are on the committee and tasked with considering your issue. Offer to help by arming them with stories and data to share.

“I had to follow my caucus.”

The only way for your community to get what you need is for your legislators to fight within their caucus to support you. Suggest they join with other local government champions to gain allies who will help advance good bills for cities and block bad bills. Offer to help identify those stakeholders.

“City funding is not our problem.”

It is the Legislature’s responsibility to ensure cities have the tools and funding to remain strong. Underfunding city government undermines the critical value that strong cities provide the state as a whole. Remind legislators that cities drive the state’s economic health, population growth, and commercial activity. The state and businesses thrive when we have vibrant communities, smooth and accessible transportation, and dependable services.

“Cities are doing better than the state.”

On a per capita basis, city revenues grow more slowly than the state’s. If your city is struggling, explain the reasons why. For cities that are faring better, remind your legislators that the vast majority of tax dollars generated by economic activity flow directly to the state, not to your city. Strong and thriving cities provide more resources to the state.

“Cities pay more for employees than the state—control your own costs.”

The majority of city expenses go to personnel costs. As in the private market, salaries for public sector employees vary by region. Many cost drivers are out of city control, such as health insurance premiums, pensions, or workers’ compensation rates set by the state. Cities use the tools they have for controlling costs but must also respond to the economic market.

A note about constituent communications and lobbying requirements

Public Disclosure Commission guidelines place important legal restrictions on using city resources to engage constituents in grassroots lobbying campaigns on legislative issues. A better approach is to focus on providing information to constituents about the impact of legislation and the actions your legislators are taking on bills. There are also reporting requirements for cities and municipal officials who engage in lobbying. Make sure you are familiar with how lobbying is defined, as well as reporting requirements.

Visit pdc.wa.gov or wacities.org for more information.

Remember that all communications with your legislator are subject to the Public Records Act.