HAMILTON

On Friday, Feb. 17, the ELP cohort met Jeff Hamilton, the Communications Manager of the City of Champaign Mayor’s Office, who revealed the surprising complexity and diversity of local governments. He compared the two primary forms of local government found in the United States: council-manager form and mayor-council form.

Champaign follows the council-manager form, meaning the day-to-day operations of city government are run by the city manager, an individual professionally trained in government administration. The city council elects the city manager, while the mayor of Champaign serves as one of the nine council members.

Urbana follows the mayor-council form of government, sometimes referred to as strong-mayor form. In this structure, the mayor effectively serves as the city manager and is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the city. This style closely resembles the three-branch structure of government: the mayor is the executive branch, and the city council is the legislative branch.

On Feb. 24, the ELP cohort met Marissa Brewer, the Director of Advocacy for the University of Illinois Office of External Relations and Communications. She provided us with excellent tips for political advocacy, echoing the messages of previous ELP guests like Jennifer Walling and Alicia Beck. Brewer says the most effective part of advocacy is your personal story: How are you connected to this legislation?

Brewer also highlighted the Student Advocacy Coalition, which like ELP, allows students to learn about the legislative process in-depth and advocate at all levels of government. This organization extends across the University of Illinois system and promotes policies that positively impact university students.

With the advice of our expert speakers in mind, the ELP cohort is revving up to visit the city council and the state capitol. My team met with a staffer for Democratic Rep. Janet Yang Rohr of the 41st District (and our bill’s sponsor) and a lobbyist from the Illinois Environmental Council to examine the nitty gritty details of the bill. We hope to finalize our fact sheet this week and schedule meetings with our local representatives and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

RUDOLPH

On Feb. 3, the ELP cohort welcomed Madison Rudolph, the Sustainability Manager at Motorola Solutions in Chicago. She outlined the complicated environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) frameworks that companies use to monitor internal progress toward ethical, transparency, and sustainability goals and report their performance to the public.

Rudolph is responsible for Motorola Solution’s annual ESG reporting. Public companies like Motorola Solutions voluntarily select and rank their most important goals (ex. reducing emissions, creating diversity in the company board, regulatory compliance, and countless others) and publish metrics that reveal their progress toward the prioritized goals. Although many ESG reporting frameworks exist, Rudolph focused on the popular Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), which specifically accounts for materiality: how does ESG information affect investors’ judgement of the company? Companies’ environmental and social behaviors may harm or bolster their reputation, which has tangible financial impacts, so SASB accounts for material information that is not incorporated into normal financial accounting.

Public demand for comprehensive ESG reporting is growing, and most public companies participate in this voluntary practice. Investors, policy makers, agencies, non-governmental organizations, and other firms consider ESG data when interacting with a company. Individuals rely on ESG data to act as informed and conscientious consumers, or in other words, to vote with their dollar.

The following Friday, ELP teams began to research their selected local or state policies and determine who to contact to begin the advocacy process. My group, “Right to Recreate,” will contact our bill’s sponsor to voice our support, discuss the potential impacts of the bill, and learn why some groups may be opposed to it. Next, each group member will individually reach out to the state representative from our own district to advocate for the Right to Recreate legislation. After all, politics is all about making personal connections.

The Environmental Leadership Program is in full swing! On Friday, Jan. 20, the cohort met at the National Soybean Research Lab for our first of eight weekly meetings. This initial session was perhaps our most important of the semester: We determined the policies we will advocate for over spring break.

The process took longer than anticipated because almost every student was attached to multiple policies, even though we can only join one policy team. We really struggled to let some of them go. In fact, a few pity votes were strategically given to keep policies from getting cut from the final list. I guess environmentalists are sentimental.

If anything, the difficulty of choosing a single policy focus speaks to the vast room for improvement in our state and local environmental regulations. There’s always more work to be done! After multiple rounds of re-reading the policies, debating, and voting, the list of policies we plan to tackle was finalized. From now until spring break, teams of two to four students will research their policy in-depth and develop a fact sheet in support of or against the proposed action.  

My group will be advocating for “Right to Recreate” legislation, a bill that would ensure public access to all navigable waterways in Illinois. This legislation would prevent private landowners from restricting access to bodies of water (lakes, rivers, streams) that are capable of supporting commercial or recreational watercraft. I’m excited to support the Right to Recreate bill because it advances both human rights and environmental justice.

Last Friday, Jan. 27, guest speaker Eban Goodstein, Director of the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College, discussed the skills and techniques for successful environmental communication. He emphasized the power of storytelling and the importance of practice, practice, practice. These communication tips will be especially handy when we meet legislators and city council members in March.

A year after the launch of iSEE’s Environmental Leadership Program, a new cohort kicked off the second year of the program on campus. Students from a variety of majors and backgrounds met for two full days Jan. 12-13 to learn about the policy-making process from local and state leaders. And this year, students were able to gather in person rather than online.

During the two-day intensive, we explored the specific legislative process each bill must go through in the Illinois General Assembly before it becomes law. The intensive focused on strengthening our advocacy and negotiation skills and preparing the cohort to read and track bills during the spring legislative session.

Guest speakers discussed their unique responsibilities as political staffers, lobbyists, legal advisors, and city council members. They highlighted the educational backgrounds and work experience that led them to those positions, giving us insight into different public policy career paths. Hearing their stories was eye-opening and inspiring, and ELP students were eager to ask questions and learn more.

In the coming weeks, the cohort will split into teams to advocate for a specific local or state policy. The policy may be an existing bill or a bill the students design themselves.

Speakers during the two-day intensive included Harriet Hentges, President and CEO, Hentges Associates; Grace Wilkin, Ward 6 representative on the Urbana City Council and member of the Urbana Sustainability Advisory Committee; Andrea Porter, Chief of Staff for state Rep. Carol Ammons, D-Urbana, and Madam Secretary of AALSCC; Jennifer Walling, Executive Director, Illinois Environmental Council; Mary Hanahan, Deputy Chief Legal Counsel, Office of Illinois Senate President Don Harmon; and Alicia Beck, a member of the Champaign City Council.