Government Affairs Chair Update
GAT Experiences Changes
By Tim Mullins
AANR Government Affairs Chair
tim.mullins@aanr.com
In last month’s column, I wrote about the work it takes to track bills and how important the efforts are of our members who bring issues to our attention. No small part of that effort is the Government Affairs Team (GAT) whose names appear each month on this page. In the last two months, we have experienced some changes in that team. We have a new Executive Director, Jim Smock, relieving our president of that hat so we have one new person to bring into the Government Affairs team and one member has moved on.
In December Audrey Weber, our long time AANR-East GAT Chair, left her position on the team. Audrey’s contributions to GAT have helped us with our efforts at Assateague, among others, and with the training guides we use for GAT members. In the year ahead, we will be expanding on those training efforts to make the team even more effective in tracking and promoting nudist friendly legislation. We will miss Audrey’s participation on the team, but we are glad she will still be here for AANR through her other responsibilities and positions. Thank you, Audrey, for all your good work.
Also in December there were changes in the AANR office. GAT depends on the office to research AANR positions and presentations on legislative issues we have previously submitted as well as putting together the packets we submit for numerous legislative proposals. Amy Spielman has taken on some of those duties with GAT, and she is a welcome addition to the team. During the next month we will be pulling together all of the GAT materials and updating them as appropriate to provide guides for GAT. We need to have our statistical information and prior position papers available for historical and research purposes. This will be a big help as we move forward.
As the weather warms, we will all be heading back to outdoor venues, and AANR wants to be part of expanding those opportunities.
We are supportive of local efforts to designate and expand nude use of public lands. I’d like to see us approaching jurisdictions with traditional nude use areas that are ex-facto and make sure they are designated.
I’m hoping in the year ahead we can have nude use be listed in guides of common uses in public lands in greater numbers. To achieve that, we need to be pushing out a nudist rights agenda for use of public lands. Our materials and our position need to be modified to demand that nudists rights be recognized when establishing use areas within the public lands management plans. We have always put forth this effort in our comments on land use, but we need to be more vocal in getting this recognized.
It is my hope and that of AANR President Susan Weaver that we can push nudist civil rights into the mainstream during this current legislative season. GAT is committed to finding ways to achieve this goal.
