2016 State Advocacy Victories

 

With state legislative sessions pretty much wrapped up for the year – and the year itself pretty much wrapped up! – now is a good time to look back at

what AARP’s state offices have accomplished this year in state advocacy.  In a word, what they’ve achieved has been amazing!!!

State Advocacy & Strategy Integration (SASI), the team within our Government Affairs department that provides strategic guidance, issue expertise and technical assistance to our state level advocates with their efforts, has pulled together accomplishments from our state offices from the 2016 legislative sessions.  The first big news is that the state offices have not just met, not just exceeded, but achieved distinguished status on AARP's 2016 state advocacy Dashboard goals!!! 

AARP's Dashboard sets strategic and financial direction for the year and defines success for the entire enterprise, the “big things” to which all staff need to pay most attention.   On state advocacy, the goal was to help 19,840,000 people through our combined Caregiving and Work and Save advocacy efforts at the state level.  To achieve distinguished status, we had to help 25 million people.  We're proud to say that through the hard work of our state office colleagues – and of course with the help of hundreds of volunteers – AARP has positively impacted a total of 36 million people across the country on these two signature state advocacy issues!

We've posted four Work and Save victories (CA, CT, MD, and NJ), which help provide access to retirement savings at work for nearly 10.8 million people.  That makes a big dent as we continue to ramp up our efforts to provide access to savings vehicles for the 55 million Americans that presently work for an employer that does not provide a way to save for retirement at work.  What’s more, over two dozen state offices have laid the groundwork to continue building on these numbers in 2017 through advocacy to pass additional Work and Save legislation, as well as to implement the bills that have already been passed over the last two years.

36 state offices have achieved Caregiving victories in 2016 (AK, AR, AZ, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, KY, LA, MD, MI, MN, NC, NE, NJ, NY, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, UT, VI, VT, WA, WV, WI, and WY) on issues ranging from the CARE Act to workplace flexibility, nursing scope of practice, respite care, telehealth, guardianship, and more.  That work has helped make the work of over 25.1 million family caregivers easier and less stressful.  Caregiving will, of course, continue to be a part of AARP state level advocacy in 2017, as work continues  on both passage and implementation of the CARE Act, as well as other AARP model legislation like the ELECT (Eligible Leave for Employee Caregiving Time) Act, RELIEF (Respite: Living Independently, Energizing Families) and all the other important measures that have been part of our Dashboard accomplishments this year.

But wait, there’s more!  While our state offices were working hard to achieve those Dashboard victories, they somehow found the time to compile an impressive list of big wins on other issues of importance to our members:

• 21 million people were protected by our energy related wins;
• at least 10 million people benefited from our telecommunications-related wins across 13 states;
• 15 states reported livable communities legislative wins;
• 786,000 people benefited by efforts to expand Medicaid and protect Medicaid expansion in three states;
• 10 states reported legislative wins on asset protection and financial exploitation efforts;
• three states successfully advocated to retain their states’ defined benefit pension plans; and,
• one protected more retirement income from taxation by expanding the retirement income taxation threshold.

And, of course, these are just the victories racked up by our state offices on some of our higher profile issues.  Each had successes on a whole host of other topics that are just too numerous to include here in one list.  The bottom line is that it was another very good year for our state offices before their legislatures and state agencies, and our members, not to mention their neighbors, will really see a benefit from all this hard work.

We all should rightfully be proud to be a part of an organization that does so much good for so many people across the country.  But we’re not going to stop at these 2016 achievements.  In just a few short weeks, the 2017 legislative sessions will start in state after state.  And AARP’s state offices, with their hundreds of volunteers, working in collaboration with SASI, States and Community Engagement, Campaigns, the Public Policy Institute, and others across the Association, will be right there to raise issues that are not only important to our members, but to all Americans.  And given how wonderful our advocates are, and how successful they’ve been in 2016 and years past, we’re completely confident that next year we’ll be back with another list of impressive accomplishments!