Letter of the Law

Tom Delaney has spent decades haunting the halls of government for the green industry. Photo: David DienerTom Delaney, director of government affairs for PLANET, has spent more than two decades working on government types on behalf of the green industry. He’s traveled the country, visiting state legislatures to try and get each to pre-empt pesticides. Now he’s focused on local governments as they start taking up regulations on fertilizers.
 
Lawn & Landscape caught up with him in his Georgia office to talk about the biggest challenges facing the industry from government – and what contractors can do about them.

What’s the biggest legislative threat the green industry faces right now?
It’s probably still the comprehensive immigration reform. Immigration is going to have the biggest impact on the most number of companies.

Right now the administration is trying to take more action against companies that are either intentionally paying people under the table or taking advantage of workers, but our industry follows the law and is checking W-2 forms and documentation. So much of it can be fraudulent, and there’s also requirements that you can’t treat people differently: you could be sued for discrimination. Companies are careful. Some of them had workers with fraudulent documentation for a long time now.

Some of the states like Arizona and Georgia have passed some laws trying to get stiffer on checking for citizenship, so that’s something that will affect a majority of companies out there.  And H2B is thrown into the mix.

What can a landscape company do to stave off any major changes?
It’s going to be on the federal level. Eventually were going to have to have support for our positions in Congress, and the only way is too have constituents having strong relationships with their representatives.

The wolf has to be at the door to get people to do things. You still have to come to Legislative Day and send letters on the issues even when there isn’t the wolf at the door, so we establish close relationships so that when we’re asking them to support a position, they already know who we are and what industry we’re in.

Our people represent businesses, they represent payrolls. A lot of the anti-immigration movements are just single people.

What’s the industry’s biggest stumbling block to getting more of a voice?
Right now it’s the economy. Everyone’s worried about keeping their head above water. It’s always been tough to get people to go to Washington. People are apprehensive about sitting in a congressional office.

There’s also fear. They might be singled out and that must mean you have illegal workers. Some people have that particular fear. We’re always trying to encourage groups to come. Even if two people come and are from different areas of the state and have different representatives, there’s no reason each one couldn’t go with the other to their representatives offices.

We get good representation from some particular states that have found the importance of coming and doing this on a regular basis.


How do you think the mid-term elections are going to impact landscape contractors?
There’s not going to be a total shift of power. Democrats are still going to be in control. There will be some changes. There’s some dissatisfaction. We’ll see some legislators more sympathetic to small business come online. Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) is going to have challenges. There’ll be some changes there. More likely, some governorships are going to be changed and state legislatures possibly on the edge of changing from one party to another. That type of thing can cause some individuals to be head of different regulatory bodies. In some states, agriculture departments are run by appointment and some of them are run by elected officals. More of them are being appointed lately.

I’ve see more proposed regulations by OSHA and EPA over the last few months than I’ve seen in the last eight years. They’re opening up more opportunity for changes. It felt like some of them have been stifled by eight years of Republican leadership. They can bring back things that couldn’t get passed before. There’s more federal register notices popping up of things being done.

What are the biggest changes in policy you’ve seen in your tenure on the Hill?
When we started, we had those lawn care hearings. There were a lot of negative articles about the industry. That sort of died down through the years until this last year. It all of a sudden picked up again. There was change in the legislature in New York that caused one of the pesticide bills to be passed. There’s a study committee in New Hampshire looking at a possible cosmetic ban like Canada’s. RISE has been active there.

In 1989-90 when we had the hearings, there was an organic movement. Now we’re back to sustainability and organic practices. There are a lot of negative articles about lawns again. They want to call it wasting resources that are used to maintain a lawn.

We’ve had more water issues in the past few years with droughts and quality like the Chesapeake Bay area. We’re in another mode of increased environmental activism, which makes people look more at things that they didn’t a few years ago.

And there’s more labor. OSHA is looking at agronomics again and safety. All those things are good, but it’s a question of how far you go with it. Now we’re talking about global warming, and whether it’s true or not or how far it goes – these are all things that end up having more influence on the tools we use and the appreciation for lawns and landscape.

Two decades ago did you think you’d have to talk about global warming?
No. And we thought a lot of this stuff could have been put to rest with more science. A lot of this just plain isn’t exact science. It stands to reason that we’re still looking at no 100 percent positives on risks or information we have on research.

Do you think the industry will ever be able to communicate cohesively?
It’s still something to work on. It’s grassroots and working with government at the state, local and federal levels. In some aspects, I thought it was getting better, then the economy slowed it down. Peoples’ priorities changed on some of that. It’s back to being difficult again. It’s as little as sending a letter. It takes less than ten minutes to send a letter, but we haven’t been able to do that.

When we get an issue that’s going to cripple us, at least we’ll have trained a lot of people to go to Washington and it won’t be their first time. We’re doing a little Hill training and communications training. They also need to be going to hearings and going to state capitals. Sometimes they just need to be in the audience for them to represent the industry.

RISE has worked more on the grassroots program over the last two years. We had a speakers’ ambassadors program where we’d go out and speak so that we’d be getting out some of those positive messages.

What do you consider your greatest success in your career?
Back when we started the H2B initiative to get more workers, I was the one who suggested not counting returning workers against the cap to a congressional staffer. That ended up getting legs. There was a voice vote in the Senate, it didn’t pass, but it got picked up by Sen. Mikulski (D-Md.) and others as being put in the law. When we were able to stay under the radar, we were able to work with H2B coalitions and organize our members, and we had some good grassroots movements. We had several fly-ins to get the bill passed, two years in a row. We took what we learned about working in pesticides in coalitions and took it with H2B and now we hope to take it on to comprehensive.

Has technology made it easier for you to do your job?
It’s definitely easier, but I also think it’s caused some of the people to not put as much heart in what they’re doing. You had a real commitment when you had to step forward and not just send a letter. It’s like that old saying: familiarity breeds contempt. I heard people saying now, “I e-mailed the guy. I left him a voicemail. I still can’t get him to respond.” Then they say, “I got on his Facebook, and that’s something he touches more regularly and that’s how I got him to respond.” That’s just the way people act now with new technology.

How many people open up the e-mails that are sent?
We’ve become blasé and it’s nothing to not respond to an e-mail. It used to be you’d feel terrible if you didn’t respond to a letter or a phone call. It’s getting harder to get attention and action.

What can contractors start doing today to have an impact on their government?
They’ve got to stop sitting on the sidelines and contact more of their people and their legislators. We’ve talked about the problem, but they just have to give it a try. It’s not so difficult or time consuming. What we’ve put on our website and I’m going to be putting in my next From the Hill message is a simple introductory e-mail. It’s sort of like a Facebook or Twitter – here I am, put me in your resources and use me when you need me, you’re going to hear from me again when there is an issue, and I’m a businessman. A businessman is more important in the community than a single person. It’s about time they used that to their advantage. Some are going to have to act more proud of their businesses.

Is there one area or level of government where a business owner can have the most impact?
There are a lot of challenges on the local level. I’m a big shot if I have a company worth so much money and employ so many people, I can be a big fish in a small pond at the local level. These kind of people become state level people. You can be more involved in local areas that will give you the confidence that you need to go talk to somebody else. One of the reasons for Facebook and all these things is the connections. You’ve got to remember face-to-face connections. Some of the best connections you can make are starting out with some face-to-face people and shaking somebody’s hand and looking them in the eye. We still want to use those other tools we have, but we can’t be closed up with our little handheld pieces of equipment.

We need to get out to meetings and fundraisers and city council meetings. And don’t tell me you can’t get on the computer and send a letter. You can do it from your hand-held equipment now.

What other issues do you see coming down the pike for landscape contractors in the next year or two?
I think it’s only going to increase these water issues. With quantity we also have quality. Phosphorus has been the key thing, the next thing is nitrogen.

We have to look at unions coming back. They seem to be flexing their muscles and their administration is in there, and they’re going to affect the way we’re able to do business.

I think that a tax of turfgrass and the landscape as not being good for the environment is going to continue until we have more of our people writing editorials and things. We do tracking and so does TruGreen with clipping services, we tend to see how many negative stories out there.

You don’t need a bunch of science and facts and figures to write an editorial. You’ve got to have stories out there and we’ve got to start that as a group.

We can’t close our eyes when one group or commodity is being attacked. We can’t stand alone anymore. It’s going to cost us more money, or it’s going to be because we lost on turfgrass.

The author is editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine. Send him an e-mail at cbowen@gie.net.