Communications Committee: Meetings & Calls

Committee Conference Call Minutes
June 6, 2000

NEXT MEETING:

Conference call on Wednesday, June 14 at 9:30 am MDT.

PRESENT:

Ruth McCormick, Al Zemsky, Kathy Van Dame, Dan Clark, Cyra Cain, Charles Malarkey for Pat Port, Dwayne Arino, Jan Miller, Karen Deike, Bill Grantham, Pat Cummins.

FLYERS:

Cyra has distributed a cover letter to be included with the flyer for non-309 states. Montana mailed 75-100 flyers, Wyoming mailed 43, Utah mailed 650 and emailed a bunch, California sent flyers to trade associations and is linking their Web site, New Mexico is mailing 700 today, NTEC sent flyers to all tribal leaders last Friday. Jan will talk to Barry Aarons about Arizona and Dennis Haddow about Colorado.

PRESS COVERAGE:

Karen will distribute later today a template press release for states to use just before their meeting. Communications Committee representatives should work with their state liaison to get it out at the right time. Dan says in Wyoming it will come from the Governor's office and Dennis Hemmer will do an interview with National Public Radio in Wyoming.

GUIDANCE FOR PARTICIPANTS:

No further comments; Jan will distribute with the changes made so far.

CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING ON JUNE 19:

Ruth has rooms for the House and Senate so the invitations can go out. They will include the flyer as well, and will go to the offices of all western representatives and senators marked to the attention of the clean air staff. Success in getting staff to the briefing will depend on phone calls to the Congressional offices from state air quality or environmental quality directors; Jan will inform those directors. Expected participants in the briefing will be Colleen Delaney and Duane Yantorno from the Market Trading Forum as well as Ruth. Bill Grantham says a tribal representative may be able to go. Notice of the briefing will not be posted on the Web site calendar because the Congressional staffs have asked that this briefing be for them.

AUGUST PUBLIC MEETINGS:

No dates are firm yet, but we will post them on the Web site as we get them.

SATELLITE BROADCAST:

Al, Pat M and Dan have been working on this. Using executive web tv may mean staging a separate briefing in Washington so that they can film it. Dan Clark has talked to the Wyoming PBS station; they don't have enough mobile equipment to film a meeting but could get it from Utah; Dan thinks we might as well film the Utah meeting if possible and he will continue to pursue that.

PUBLIC ADVISORY BOARD MEETING ON JUNE 21:

Kathy Augustine is the liaison with the PAB; Jan will attend at least part of the meeting since it is in Salt Lake City and can cover the entire meeting if Kathy can't come. It is not yet clear what role the Communications Committee will have in the PAB meeting.

MATERIALS FOR THE PUBLIC MEETING:

Jan and Colleen are working on them and will distribute for Communications Committee review when available. The first test of them will be at a briefing for Utah air quality staff on June 14, and they will be used for the Congressional briefing and the PAB meeting. We may ask the PAB for their assessment of the materials.

FEDERAL REGISTER NOTICE:

It will be sent in this morning with the flyer attached. It lists Al as the contact person.

BUDGET:

The Coordinating Group had a conference call yesterday to decide how to cut the budget to fit with the allotted funds. A number of committee and forum budgets will be "held harmless" (this includes the Communications Committee) and others will be asked to make a percentage cut. Forum co-chairs will meet in Denver on July 18 to work out the final details. Liaisons from the Communications Committee need to pay attention to their committees and forums to be sure public outreach funds are not cut in this process.