The Hot Sheet

Important City Council update!

ACTION ALERT! Pittsburgh City Council plans to vote TOMORROW on a package of legislation that deals with lobbyist and campaign finance disclosure and no-bid contracts, introduced by Councilman Bill Peduto.

#1 Campaign Finance Reform bill would:

• limit Council campaign contributions to $1,000 for individuals, $2,000 for PAC’s
• limit Mayoral contributions to $2,000 for individuals, $4,000 for PAC’s
• require the creation of a searchable database of all campaign contributions and city contracts.

#2  No-bid contracts bill would eliminate no-bid contracts with the city valued at more than $30,000

#3 Lobbyist Disclosure Act would require all Request-For-Proposal responses to disclose finder’s fee or payments to lobbyists or consultants.

#4 Lobbyist Registration Act would require anyone engaging in more than 30 hours of paid lobbying during a three-month period to register as lobbyists with the city.
The vote is scheduled for TOMORROW, Wednesday April 29th. This would be a major step for Pittsburgh towards good government practices and policies.

Call your city councilperson and ask them to VOTE YES for Councilman Peduto’s proposed good government legislation!

http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/council/

Tags: campaign finance, city council, legislation, pittsburgh, reform, transparency, vote

Voter Guide outreach’s got soul

Tags: big throwback, election, local, may 19, Pennsylvania, primary, voter guide, voter turnout

Informed voters are better.

We got candidates to answer a lot of questions to help people make a better decision at the polls on Election Day.  But now we need to tell people about this information so they know where to look!

Help us pass out our voter guide! Next Saturday, we are going south of the city.  Email Adam Schloss, our Field Coordinator, if you want to help get out the informed vote!

• Saturday, April 25th
  1pm - 4pm
  Meet at the Westfield T stop in Beechview

Email adam@paleague.com

Tags: beechview, canvass, pittsburgh, volunteer, voter guide

Buy a book!

Tova holds it down at Joseph Beths Booksellers for our bookfair fundraiser, where today we get 20% of all purchases. (We’re also playing Scrabble and taking word suggestions.)

29 New Voters

Stationed ourselves at Montour High School today, and 29 high school seniors registered to vote for the first time, AND they plan to vote in the primary election (on an “off” year!).  Excellent!

Tags: High school, new voters, voter registration

Upcoming High School Voter Registration Events

If you know seniors at these high schools who aren’t registered, let them know we’re coming to them!

• Tuesday March 24th @ Montour High School
• Wednesday March 25th @ Northgate High School
• Tuesday March 31st @ Brashear Highschool
• Tuesday April 7th @ The Neighborhood Academy

It will be our first time registering new voters in Northgate and The Neighborhood Academy, so we’re pretty excited.  More dates and schools to come!

*Also, if you’d like to help register new voters before the April 20th deadline, email roxanne@paleague.com

Tags: election, engaged, high schools, pittsburgh public schools, politics, voter registration, Youth

Get Early Voting signatures in Sen. Pippy’s District

On Saturday March 21st we will head to Mt. Lebanon to collect our last signatures in support of Early Voting.

Mt. Lebanon is in Sen. John Pippy’s district.  Sen Pippy is a member of the Senate State Government committee, where the early voting bill is currently under review.

We need volunteers to help canvass door-to-door for petition signatures!

Email adam@paleague.com to join us this Saturday, from 11-2 or 3-6pm.

Thanks!

Tags: canvassing, early voting

POWERSHIFT’09: What it was

The largest lobby day in history.

That was what we were told we would be a part of on Monday when we arrived. And it was repeated more than once over the weekend, may have even become the mantra: we, over 10,000 eighteen-to-twentysomethings, would swarm the halls of our Congress to demand clean and green legislative action on climate change.

And so we did. Monday was off to a great start; there was a blizzard the night before and those of us who weren’t staying close to the Capitol had a slow time of it taking transit into the city in the morning, with at least 6 inches of snow and counting.

But we made it, and our crew in particular visited Congressman Tim Murphy and Congressman Mike Doyle’s offices to talk to their staffers in charge of energy and environmental policy. Twenty people, much less young people, showing up at a rep’s office is pretty unusual, and so we know we made a visual impact. Meanwhile, other groups who had come to Powershift from all over the country were meeting with their representatives and senators. (Proud to say, though, that Pennsylvania had the second-largest number of attendees at 600).

The conference itself offered lots of opportunity to focus on your particular interests or fill in the gaps — I attended a session that specifically spelled out things to look for in really strong legislation against climate change– and there were also movies, chances to meet and talk state-by-state, and lengthy training sessions where we role-played how to lobby a member of Congress on Monday (Mac and I volunteered to help with the training, which consisted of us pretending to be the elected member that the group was trying to lobby; this was pretty fun for me).

But what we could not have ever expected or hoped for, this particular conference also gave us: robot fights. That’s right folks, there were robot fights going on at the Powershift conference…okay, that’s not exactly true; really, the regional high school robotics competition was also taking place at the Washington Convention Center, and the we definitely made the most of our down-time checking it out.

We met some pretty awesome people in PA from all different schools and organizations that we’re looking forward to working with — we hope to have a follow-up event soon; maybe you can come and meet them, too.

-Carly

Tags: #powershift09, climate change, conference, grassroots, green, green jobs, largest, lobby, organizers, Pennsylvania, pittsburgh, policy, powershift, students for a greener pittsburgh, Washington DC, Youth, Youth Vote

Canvass Opportunity: Mexican War Streets, this Thursday

Join us as we canvass the Mexican War Streets, on the North Side, to build support for Early Voting in Pennsylvania!

We will meet at Beleza Community Coffeehouse, at 1501 Buena Vista Street, at 3:30 PM. Let us know that you plan to come help by RSVP’ing on the Facebook event page.

Of course, you should sign the petition yourself, if you haven’t already.

Tags: canvassing, early voting

Early Voting in Pennsylvania

So Pennsylvania might finally join the 31 other states in having the option to cast an early ballot for elections.

Early voting legislation recently introduced by Rep. DePasquale in the state House and parallel legislation in the state Senate by Sen. Leach seeks to make counties offer times for people to cast their ballot on at minimum the weekends and possibly some weekdays starting two weeks before an election.

The legislation would allow those whose work schedules or other commitments or constraints to make sure they can get their ballot cast.  It would also allow get-out-the-vote efforts more time to mobilize voters, and help reduce long lines and machine errors on election day from keeping voters away.

This legislation is partially necessary because the state constitution does not allow absentee ballots to be used for anything other than the specific reasons listed.  (And heck, even Iraq has early voting.)

The PA League of Young Voters is collecting petition signatures to give to the Senate committees indicating the support for this legislation.

Support Early Voting in PA

SIGN THE PETITION ONLINE

Volunteer to help with the petition drive — join our canvassing efforts or request copies of the petition to distribute yourself. Email mac@paleague.com.

Tags: absentee, disenfranchised, early voting, pa league of young voters, Pennsylvania, pittsburgh, voters, Voting