Late last night, the House and Senate finished work on their respective budget resolutions and now they are all heading home for a couple weeks of recess.

Most federal Representatives and Senators will be home in their districts over the next two weeks for the Spring District Work Period. ASCE Key Contacts should watch for opportunities to meet with these folks during public appearances and office hours in district offices and educate them about the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and what they should do to begin improving it.

Start by visiting your lawmaker’s website: for Representatives visit http://www.house.gov and select your Representative from the drop-down list. For Senators, visit http://www.senate.gov and select "Senators" at the top left for a list that can be arranged by last name or by state. Many elected officials list local events and appearances on their websites. Many lawmakers also produce an e-newsletter to inform constituents of events and issues, so if you sign up from their website you might get advance notice future events.

ASCE members can visit the "Six Clicks" (or less!) advocacy website to learn about the top civil engineering issues currently facing congress and prepare for speaking with your elected officials. Or, if you can’t make an opportunity to meet with your lawmakers, send them a message through the personalized system. Don’t forget to add your own personal experience as a civil engineer to your message so your lawmaker will know your message is from a real constituent and not generated automatically by a computer!

For non-Members, check out the Infrastructure Action Plan for the 110th Congress  for background on the nation’s infrastructure and specific steps legislators can take to Raise the Grades on America’s Infrastructure.

Find more tips like this to get involved in the public policy process at http://www.asce.org/keycontacts .

Thanks, and have a great Spring Break!!

If you’re like me, your To Do list for this weekend has just one thing, and it’s really a MUST Do:  Taxes.  That wonderful time of year when you tally up every cent that has passed through your hands in the last year and then find out how much the government owes you (joy!) or how much you owe the government (tragedy!)

While it’s tempting to get discouraged at how much of your hard-earned cash gets sent away, it’s a good opportunity to think about where that money goes.  I’m sure we could argue on and on about big government vs. small government, but I’m thinking more along the civil engineering lines.

Right now, congress is thick into the FY 2007 appropriations process.  The ASCE Government Relations staff recently put together a list of civil engineering appropriations priorities as part of the briefing materials for Policy Week in March. (Available on the “Six Clicks” advocacy website under the GR Leadership Training tab.)  It’s not a huge list – add everything up and it probably wouldn’t even come to one-hundredth of the total federal budget.  But it is significant to civil engineers, and to the people who will benefit from these programs:  families whose houses will be more likely to withstand the forces of a tornado, hurricane or earthquake thanks to wind and earthquake hazards research programs, people who will get to work faster and safer thanks to road and transit improvements made possible through SAFETEA-LU, just to name a couple examples.

If you’ve ever visited your lawmakers in Washington, D.C., either on your own or as part of a group as ASCE members did during Policy Week 2006, you have seen that you’re just one of hundreds -- or thousands, or hundreds of thousands? -- who visit Capitol Hill every day, waving your sheet of legislative priorities before policy leaders and their staff members.  While it’s easy for us to see how a few million dollars can be well spent on our civil engineering priorities, lawmakers are faced with more requests than they could possibly accommodate, and must make tough choices.

All of this presents another opportunity to get discouraged.  But that’s not to say that we should give up – NO!  In fact, just the opposite.  Don’t let your elected leaders off easy!  It simply means you must be aware that you are competing with many other interests, and frame your message accordingly.  Keep your message short and to the point, so non-technical lawmakers don’t get confused.  Make sure your most compelling arguments (how this will benefit the lawmakers’ constituents) are prominently featured.  And remember that you are a voter and the expert on these issues – they want to hear your side, however difficult it may seem to get to talk to them.  At the end of the day, everyone’s goal in this process should be to improve the quality of life for people in the U.S. and beyond.

For more tips on how to effectively communicate with elected officials, visit the ASCE Government Relations webpage and click on “Key Contact Program” from the list of Quick Links.