Good afternoon, NSDC.

Welcome to the January 22, 2024, edition of NSDC’s weekly update email. In today’s rundown:

• The View from Washington
• NSDC Welcomes Citizenly as its Newest Affiliate
• Districts Make the Difference Press Release
• Final Reminder – NSDC/TFG Grants Survey
• Upcoming Events

We are pretty sure the Special Districts Association of Oregon is not this woman’s employer; but if she works at an Oregon special district, then SDAO’s Insurance Services should probably expect a claim.

Let’s slide into the update:

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Quick Note: January 2024 Legislative Committee – The NSDC Legislative Committee will meet or its first meeting of the 2024 on Thursday, January 25, at 3 p.m. ET / Noon PT. Check out the preliminary agenda here. A final agenda will be distributed on Tuesday, January 23. 

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The View from Washington

House and Senate Action

The House is not in session this week. The Chamber is scheduled to return next Monday.

The Senate gaveled in this afternoon, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has queued up several nomination votes this week. However, a border security and immigration package could take center stage. While Senate leaders have expressed optimism that a deal – negotiated by Senators Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and James Lankford, R-Okla., – could soon be announced, it’s unclear whether a bipartisan agreement will emerge in the coming days. It should be noted that the border security talks are integral to efforts to advance the Biden administration’s foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and others. While the two are unrelated, Republican lawmakers have insisted that the supplemental spending request be paired with border security reforms.

Congress Approves Short-Term Funding Patch

Last week, Congress approved and President Biden signed into law a stopgap funding bill. Passage of the measure was timely, as a partial government shutdown was set to begin on January 20. Similar to the previous Continuing Resolution (CR), lawmakers will stagger the new deadlines.

Under the agreement, four (of the 12) spending bills – those covering Agriculture, Energy and Water, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development – are extended until March 1. Funding for the remaining federal agencies – which were set to expire on February 2 – will run through March 8.

The stopgap package will provide appropriators more time to write spending bills that adhere to the topline budget deal that was agreed to last week. The CR also extends funding for community health centers, teaching health centers and the National Health Service Corps. In addition, the measure extends special diabetes programs and averts steep cuts to hospitals that have a high volume of Medicaid and uninsured patients.

Looking ahead, House and Senate appropriators will turn their attention to hashing out spending levels for the various federal departments, as well as individual programs, for the remainder of the current fiscal year.

Policy Group Spotlight: House Panel Advances Outdoor Recreation Package

Last week, the House Natural Resources Committee advanced a bipartisan outdoor recreation package – the EXPLORE Act (H.R. 6492).

Among other things, H.R. 6492 aims to modernize visitor experiences, streamline the permitting process for small businesses relying on public land access, and improve accessibility for various groups including sportsmen and women, military service members, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and kids.

The bill also focuses on protecting rock climbing areas, creating new bike trails, restoring campgrounds, and modernizing infrastructure while supporting gateway communities by addressing housing shortages and outdated infrastructure.

Elements of the legislation have been part of a conversation in the past for the NSDC Park and Recreation Policy Group. Special districts providing infrastructure services in communities adjacent to U.S. National Park, U.S. Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management lands may be interested in learning more.

A section-by-section summary of the legislation can be accessed here.

Upcoming Hearings of Interest

Senate Banking – On Thursday morning, the panel will hear local perspectives and challenges on the reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program. Additional information on the hearing can be found here.

Legislative insights provided by NSDC’s partners at Paragon Government Relations

NSDC Welcomes Citizenly as Affiliate Member

A new approach to communication among elected officials’, candidates, and their constituents has launched with Citizenly, NSDC’s newest Bronze Affiliate!

The platform provides a new opportunity for local elected officials, including special district board members, interact with their community. The Portland, Ore.,-based company launched the site in late 2023, beginning with elected officials in Oregon. Now, the platform is expanding nationally. Check out more from Citizenly:

Citzenly: New Political Platform, Citizenly, Launches in Oregon

A new platform called Citizenly will bring constituents and elected officials or political candidates together in a positive way. The platform, which has been “beta” launched in Oregon, is designed to improve the experience of being a citizen and public servant. We’re hopeful that special district officials in Oregon and beyond will be willing to try out this early version at citizenly.com and let us know how we can improve the platform to meet your, and your constituents’, needs before we expand nationwide. 

Here’s why Citizenly was started and how it’s meant to help government officials, candidates, and members of the public.

Citizenly was created because the internet, for all of the good it's done, hasn’t necessarily improved the experience of being a citizen or public servant. In fact, the internet has arguably made it worse or harder in some ways. If you are a special district official, you may have experienced it firsthand: anonymous Facebook users questioning your motives, X (Twitter) users replying to your post with personal attacks, or messages that may be from bots or non-constituents. These toxic interactions have, especially over the last few years, reduced trust locally and nationally. And it’s probably dissuaded some people from public service.

Additionally, members of the public find it difficult to know who represents them at all levels— from federal through state and special districts down to cities, counties and school boards. Simply put, nowhere before has all of this information existed in one place and been well-organized and easily accessible.

Our goal at Citizenly is to change all of that by creating a single place where citizens can go to get information and where public servants can interact with constituents in a way that welcomes discourse and disagreement, but constructively.

Here’s how it works now, in our “beta” phase, and how we envision it developing in the future.

In our first release, any resident of Oregon can sign up for free and immediately see all of their elected officials and candidates, along with key information about each. If you are an elected official or candidate, in a few months, you will be able to “claim” your profile and update a few key fields, like your photo and information about you and your role.

We’re also really proud to have compiled the world’s first and most complete database of every elected official and political candidate in the country, from the President to school boards and special district officials. Our goal for all states is for our data to always be 99%+ complete and 99%+ accurate at any one time—a standard we’ve already met and exceeded in Oregon. (We’ve aggregated all of this information from public sources and don’t distribute any private information.)

So what’s our vision for Citizenly, and what’s to come? In the months ahead, we’ll be steadily iterating Citizenly to be a little like a mashup of LinkedIn and NextDoor: where those platforms connect users based on professional network or neighborhood, we’ll connect users based on jurisdiction or constituency, as well as political or policy issues of common interest. We’ll offer various outreach and compliance tools, such as surveys for the former and records retention and public meetings notices for the latter. Underneath it all, as a special district official, you’ll be able to see whether the person you are interacting with is actually a constituent or not.

We’ll be working hard to balance freedom of expression with a prohibition against personal attacks and clearly false statements. In short, Citizenly is intended to be a one-stop shop for sharing and obtaining reliable information, and interacting with others based on constituency or shared policy interests. It’s also meant to be an inclusive place that welcomes people across the political spectrum.

But first things first. We’re really excited about this early version of the platform; however, like any early version, we know that there will be some things we didn’t anticipate or didn’t fully think through. We’d be enormously grateful to any special district official in Oregon who signs up (it’s free) at www.citizenly.com. We welcome feedback from constituents and everyday users as well.

Thanks to Oregon’s special district officials for your service and thank you in advance for giving Citizenly a try.

John Horton is the founder and CEO of Citizenly. Prior to founding Citizenly, he worked at the county, state, and federal levels, first as a deputy district attorney in Multnomah County, then as legal counsel to the Oregon House Judiciary Committee, and later as a White House aide. He subsequently founded an Oregon-based technology company, LegitScript, where he served as CEO and Chairman for 15 years. Citizenly is headquartered in the Portland, Oregon, area and has approximately a dozen employees. Citizenly is not a partisan organization, and its employees’ political views span the political spectrum.

DMTD: Video Contest Brings Scholarship Opportunity to High Schools

Districts Make the Difference Press Release – January 18, 2024
Click here for a PDF copy of the DMTD press release.
NSDC requests Members promote DMTD to their memberships and sharing tools for their local use to share this public awareness program locally.

 The National Special Districts Coalition (NSDC) is promoting its 3rd annual scholarship contest for high school students designed to encourage young people to engage with local government to enhance their civics education. The scholarships are designed as awards for a student video contest operated through the coalition’s public awareness campaign “Districts Make The Difference.”

High school students, grades 9-12 are asked to submit a short video (60 seconds or less) that provides a glimpse into the essential services provided by special districts in the United States. There are more than 30,000 special districts in the U.S., and they include a wide variety of services specific to their community’s needs. Examples include some fire districts, water districts, mosquito abatement districts, recreation and park districts, cemetery districts and more.

At the end of May, Districts Make The Difference will award:

• $2,000 for the First-place winner
• $1,000 for the Second-place winner
• $500 for the Third-place winner.

In addition, $500 will be awarded to the student’s chosen teacher for each winning video.

“This scholarship fosters an awareness of local government at a young age to encourage students to gain an understanding of the essential services special districts provide in their communities,” said NSDC Executive Committee Member Neil McCormick.

Students can visit the Districts Make the Difference website to watch past years’ video submissions and learn more about the guidelines for this year’s contest.

The video submission period is January 1 – March 31, 2024.

Visit www.districtsmakethedifference.org/video-contest for more information.

Reminder: TFG/NSDC Grants Services Survey

Please share with your memberships.

The National Special Districts Coalition (NSDC) partners with The Ferguson Group (TFG) to provide grant services, training, and more to Coalition members and their special district members.

As NSDC and TFG seek to provide the quality services to the nation’s special districts, our Grants Team is seeking NSDC special district members’ perspectives and concerns with the federal grants landscape – including awareness of grant programming, understanding of grants process, application preparation, grant writing, review, and more.

Please complete this Microsoft Forms survey no later than February 2 to help inform and continue improving the NSDC Grants Program.

Special district member feedback will help the NSDC/TFG Grants Team continue to enhance the services provided to our members. Thank you!

Upcoming Events

NSDC Legislative Committee Meeting – January 25
January 25 | 3 p.m. Eastern Time | Zoom | Preliminary Agenda

Special Districts Association of Oregon Annual Conference
February 8-11 | Seaside, Ore.

NSDC Regular Member & Executive Committee Meeting, 2024 Quarter 1
February 16 | 8:30 a.m. Mountain Time| Hybrid | Denver, Colo.

Special Districts on the Hill (Association Leads Only)
April 29 – May 2 | Washington, D.C.

NSDC Regular Member & Executive Committee Meeting, 2024 Quarter 2
Save the Date – May 2 | Washington, D.C.

Click here for a rundown of NSDC Legislative Committee Meetings – the final Thursday of each month (except November/December)

Click here for scheduled dates of NSDC’s five policy advisory groups.

Got an event/meeting coming up? Submit it here.