PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The Public Affairs Committee is busy raising awareness about the Junior League’s mission and the issues that are important to our community partners before the State Legislature.

This year’s Fall Conference, held on October 13th, saw ten NYSPAC Leagues come together to discuss issues of importance to their members. After an interactive morning learning about advocacy and lobbying best practices for non-profits, delegates spent the afternoon discussing and voting upon four key policy areas to further research, with a view to adopting a position on viable legislation that can be advocated upon in Albany in the spring. The four broad issues for NYSPAC research and ongoing work are:

• Literacy/Education: a key area of research will be the Governor’s upcoming initiative on providing access to universal pre-K education.

• Foster Care: two areas were identified as being the most needy of NYSPAC’s attention: (1) continuing with the legislation supported by NYSPAC last year that ensure youths ageing out of New York’s foster care system would have access to Medicaid after turning 18 and (2) looking at legislative initiatives that would help raise the monthly stipend rates to paid foster care parents across the State.

• Domestic Violence: two areas were identified as being the most needy of NYSPAC’s attention (1) evaluating and researching legislation that would establish a system enabling merit time consideration for incarcerated victims of domestic violence and (2) researching legislation that would provide victims of domestic violence with appropriate rights under existing employment law to protect them from discrimination by employers.

• Children’s Nutrition: we will continue to support legislation that would ensure access to the healthy food and beverage options in schools across the State – specifically, NYSPAC will offer ongoing support to Assemblywoman Sandy Galef’s bill on nutritional options in vending machines, that was rolled into the broader bill, The Healthy Schools Act of 2007, which is currently pending discussion and final agreement with the Joint Conference Committee of the Senate and the Assembly. Key initiatives to support passage of this legislation will include calling upon NYSPAC members to encourage their members to participate in a letter writing campaign urging action on the legislation – more information on this to follow shortly.

In terms of next steps, the chairs of NYSPAC’s two task forces – Children & Families and Women & Health – will soon be sending out information and seeking help with researching legislation under each of the four chosen policy areas. If you have an interest in one or more of these areas please contact Fiona Grant (fiona.grant@gmail.com) to make sure you are added to the Task Force Chairs’ distribution list. The Task Force Chairs are keen to get as many leagues involved in the next phase as possible. 

Legislation that will be lobbied on April 7-8, 2008 in Albany:

• SUPPORTING THE NUTRITIONAL WELL-BEING OF NEW YORK’S CHILDREN (pdf)

• GRANT MERIT TIME FOR INCARCERATED DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SURVIVORS (pdf)

• PROVIDE FUNDING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SHELTER SERVICES FOR ALL VICTIMS OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE (pdf)

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