To: All Staffers in Senator Bartos-ONeills Office

From: Senator Alexandra Bartos-ONeill

Re: Memo - This Years Legislative Agenda and Priorities

Legislative Agenda Memo

Senator Alexandra Bartos-ONeill
Connecticut (Democrat)
1.17.16

Thank you all for joining me as staffers in my office for this term as serve as Senator in
Congress on behalf of Connecticut. As we continue to work together this term, I wanted to
outline and make clear our goals. For example, what our priorities are, how to approach
achieving those goals, strategies for getting bills through Congress, and many more. I hope this
memo will elucidate in how to approach issues we face as we power through and promote our
bills both as individuals and collectively, as a group. Through this, we will hopefully achieve the
most ideal efficiency in promoting our priorities and representation of our constituency in our
bills that we propose.

As Your Senator

I want you all to keep in mind that my utmost priority is to listen the people of the state of
Connecticut and take those voices and have them be represented in Congress. As your senator,
that is what I aim to do.

My Role: As your senator, I want to be clear on what role I want to take on for this
upcoming term. As mentioned before, representing Connecticut is my utmost priority. As a
senator representing Connecticut, I hope to become a direct connection the people can have to
Congress, much like a direct telephone line to the people in charge, to Congress. However, I also
want to talk about my role in our office, beyond representation. I cant emphasize enough how
important it is that you, as my staffers, understand that my role as senator is dependent on your
input, as well. In our office, we are peers working together to achieve our goals. In that regard,
we are all on the same playing field with the same ability and the same goal. That is the image I
want you to have while working in this office.

My Goal: My goal is to achieve a link between the people and Congress, and also pass
bills that represent and benefit our constituency, as well as benefit the nation as a whole. The
hope is to at least, pass a few meaningful bills.

Our Constituency

Our constituency is our priority, who we represent. It is important to understand who they
are and accurately represent their concerns, as well as make their dreams into a reality through
passing those bills in Congress.
 How to accurately represent them: Our constituency consists of a majority Caucasian
population, though ethnic and cultural diversity still exists within the community of Connecticut,
across districts. A majority of the population are middle class earning families, However,
Connecticut has a significant real estate and manufacturing industry that supports Connecticuts
economy. Our main goal is to accurately represent our constituency. As a result, it is necessary to
outline all emails, letters, criticisms, and responses of any sort from our constituents into what
they want to see done in Congress and why. We will then compile this information by category
and frequency of request. We will also send out monthly polls to our constituents to get a quick
sense of how the feel about their connection to Congress and on whether or not, weve done
well. In addition, these polls will also include questions about what they would like to see in
future policy, as well. It is important we get our agenda and priorities out to the people to
emphasize our ability to accountable to the peoples needs and transparent, in terms of process
and reasoning behind our decisions.

Issue Priorities

These are our main priorities. These priorities are what you should focus on when
approaching policy and bill drafting. The enumeration of these priorities, however, do not limit it
to these specific priorities or exclude any other potential priorities that may arise from our
constituents or change. Please pay close attention to these issue priorities, as well as the specific
policy goals within them.

1. Womens Health, Safety, and Rights: Womens health, safety, and rights are right at
the top of our list of things to do. In bills and legislation, we want to focus on granting
women full control over their body, including the right to abortion, pregnancy prevention
methods, medical care, and treatment. It is also important to focus on womens safety on
college campuses across the nation where sexual assault rates continue to grow while
universities turn a blind eye.

2. Gun Safety and Gun Deaths Prevention: The illegalization of guns may not be within
our reach, but gun safety and gun deaths preventions are. Our focus should be on
education on guns to increase gun safety (for example, how to store guns properly, or
mandating that each gun owner go through a class). Another one of our focuses should be
on prevention of accidental deaths via guns, which fundamentally ties in with gun safety
and childrens ability to access guns.

3. Veterans Rights: It is important that our veterans have access to appropriate means of
transitioning from life on the force to life as a regular citizen. This includes education for
different careers and other benefits.

As a Staffer

As a staffer, you have an important role to fulfill. This isnt just about administrative
tasks, but making a difference in Congress.
 Your Role: Your role is to voice your opinion. The idea to get as many ideas and
thoughts out on the floor about how to approach, what we should focus, how to get both
Congressional and public support for bills, as well as have solid research behind all our findings.
Do not hesitate to speak, do not hesitate to state your opinion. We need all the input possible to
achieve the best legislation.

Your Goal: Ultimately and ideally, Id like you all to focus on the first and second
priorities, especially when reelection approaches. These priorities are of the utmost importance in
and of itself.

I look forward to working with you all this term. Hopefully, we shall work cohesively to
accomplish only the best legislation possible for our constituents, the State of Connecticut, the
United States of America, and ourselves.