For their visit to Tallahassee on Jan. 18 and 19, Monroe County Legislative Affairs Director Lisa Tennyson handed commissioners Michelle Coldiron and Holly Raschein a schedule that would have made the average person dizzy just by looking at it: The packed agenda included at least 20 meetings and two pending ones. The occasion? The county’s lobbying teams and commissioners were in the state capital for the legislative session to advocate for local issues and also to attend Legislative Day for the Florida Association of Counties (FAC) as well as for the Small County Coalition.
Coldiron described the pace to Keys Weekly.
“It’s fast and furious,” she said. “We got into the airport at 11, grabbed a bite of lunch, then met with (State Rep. Jim) Mooney. We were running from the House side to the Senate side to the governor’s office.”
Tennyson provided a list of the issues to keep mentioning to governor’s staff, senators and representatives as they took meetings: stewardship funding for water quality projects, pump-out funding, anchoring bill, infrastructure money … and much more.
Both Coldiron and Raschein emphasized that Sunshine Law issues did not come into play. The Sunshine Law decrees that meetings of government agencies and representatives — and discussions of pending local issues — shall be open to the public.
“When Michelle and I are taking meetings in Tallahassee, we are there to discuss the county’s legislative agenda, which has already been publicly discussed and voted on in a BOCC meeting prior to any commissioners traveling to Tallahassee to advocate on behalf of the County,” said Raschein.
The commissioners also noted that Raschein’s experience in the capital as a state representative was an asset for the meetings.
“Holly still knows so many of the elected officials there,” pointed out Coldiron. “Even though we didn’t have a set meeting, she would jump into offices and I would just follow her: ‘Hey, we’re here.’ We got meetings with legislators we might not have had. I presented more as a ‘boots on the ground’ approach and her whole way was saying, ‘How much more time do you have before you vote?’ She had a different lingo. It made it really good, because we could play off of each other.”
Coldiron pointed out that she is running for second vice president of the FAC, and therefore is on a path to be its president in four years.
“This means that Monroe County will have a bigger presence and be in Tallahassee more often,” she said, pointing out that the goal for all 67 counties in Florida is “to protect home rule.”
The issues that were most important to Raschein during this visit included “continued funding of the Florida Keys Stewardship Act, advocating on issues related to Citizens Property Insurance, and working to refine legislation related to anchoring and mooring.”
But even after this whirlwind January visit, the commissioners will still have more chances to represent Monroe County’s taxpayers at the state capital.
“During the state of Florida’s 60-day legislative session, we visit Tallahassee once or twice a month,” said Raschein.
