January brought about the first recognition of 2015’s staff anniversaries. Ken Kelewae (middle) celebrates six years on staff in the I.T. Department maintaining all office hardware. David Jones, our I.T. Intern, celebrates his third year on staff as he attends Stark State University.

Congratulations to both of these dedicated computer specialists. We couldn’t do what we do without you.

State and Federal Communications is excited to be attending the 2015 National Grassroots Conference on February 3-6. Elizabeth Bartz, president and CEO of the company, and a team of three of the staff, will be heading to Key West to participate in the program.

We  believe in the great value of this gathering and so we are proud to be the sponsor of the Live Twitter Board at the conference. You can follow the conversations on Twitter @PACouncil #GRC15.

Professor Wilson Huhn [kneeling on the right] from the University of Akron School of Law presented a one hour CLE about Abraham Lincoln’s influence on the interpretation of the Constitution.

State and Federal Communications had a team of 10 attending the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) 36th Annual Conference. It was held from December 7-10 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the beautiful OMNI William Penn Hotel. COGEL always offers great sessions concerning lobbying, campaign finance, governmental ethics, and election laws and best practices. It was good to see many familiar faces and meet new members.

In December we gathered together at Flemings in Akron for our annual holiday party. We had a relaxing night with good food and time to talk to each other. The staff presented Elizabeth with their gift to her – a pair of tickets to see Jay Leno and dinner beforehand at District. Elizabeth also presented the winner of the door decorating contest and gave each employee Akron’s famous TEMOs chocolate tree to enjoy.

The number of municipalities and regional governments our research associates track continues to grow. We now cover more than 230 municipalities and local governments. This is part of a continuous effort to better serve the needs of our clients.

In that effort, we have recently added jurisdictions to our website. These entries provide the core information our clients need for their government relations work.

The new jurisdictions are:

American Samoa           Guam           Northern Mariana Islands     U.S. Virgin Islands

If you are a government relations professional looking for information about the upcoming 36 Gubernatorial Inaugurations, State and Federal Communications has got you covered!
Watch the video below to see what our research team provides for you in this definitive Inaugurations Guide.

Click here to sign up for your own Inaugurations Guide.

We are sending out the 2015 State and Federal Communications, Inc. Executive Source Guidebooks today! For all of our clients who receive them, they will arrive in early January.

If you would like to know more about our Guidebooks and our compliance services, send a request to marketing@stateandfed.com.

State and Federal Communications is thrilled to work in Akron and we recognize that we have a responsibility to reach out to the community around us. For this holiday season, our Giving Tree donations have gone to the CORE Furniture Bank in Cuyahoga Falls.

CORE is an amazing organization that assists families in need with furniture and housewares, so we collected sheets, blankets and pillows.

Many agencies in Summit County partner with CORE, including Summit County Children Services, the Veterans Administration, Haven of Rest Ministries, Battered Women’s Shelter, Oriana House, OPEN M, and Springtime of Hope.

Happy Holidays to the CORE Furniture Bank, and thank you for all of the work you do to help our community!

State and Federal Communications was a sponsor of a recent WASRG holiday event to raise money for The Children’s Inn at NIH, which is located in Bethesda, Maryland and serves pediatric patients and their families from all over the world.

Current WASRG President Stefani Grant from Unilever and 2015 WASRG President Rebecca South from State & Federal Communications sent the following thank you note:

“On behalf of the Washington Area State Relations Group Board of Directors, I would like to let you know that the Annual WASRG Holiday Happy Hour raised $1,974 for The Children’s Inn at NIH!  Your generosity and good cheer helped to make our event fun and allowed WASRG to give to a worthy cause.”

We are always happy to work with WASRG and we’re honored to do our part to help The Children’s Inn at NIH!

The research team at State and Federal Communications has developed an Inaugurations Guide to help provide our clients with the most up-to-date changes. The guide is based on the November 2014 elections and provides names of the governors, inauguration dates, rules about providing tickets to events, and contributing to inaugural committees.

This guide provides you with yet another compliance reference tool to effectively handle the changing legislation as it pertains to government affairs. For non-subscribers you can gain access to the guide by clicking on the following link, Inaugurations Guide.

The Washington Area State Relations Group (WASRG) is throwing a holiday party with fun, food, and networking – all for a good cause! State and Federal Communications is proud to be a sponsor of the WASRG Holiday Happy Hour & Philanthropic Event in Washington, D.C. on December 17, 2014.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to The Children’s Inn at NIH, a facility designed to keep families together as children receive treatments for critical illnesses at the National Institute of Health.

Here is our December-January calendar. If you are attending any of the coming events, please stop by and say hello!

December 3   Ohio Society Holiday Party; Washington, DC

December 6-10   COGEL, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

December 9-12   NCSL Fall Forum, Washington, DC

January 8-11   NCSL Executive Committee Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana

January 9-11   Women In Government Annual Meeting, St. Petersburg Beach, Florida

January 11-16   Public Affairs Institute, Laguna Beach, California

If you are in a panic about 2015, relax, we have you covered. The list attached shows all of the jurisdictions included in the State and Federal Communications website. Every state in our country will be in session in 2015 and those cities and counties are not going to sit back and do nothing. They will all be busy.

We are happy to report our list of municipalities continues to grow and many more will be added along with the U.S. territories of Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

So many of our clients are drilling down from the states and going to cities and counties, and those jurisdictions do not always follow state rule. We have always emphasized doing your homework before venturing into a state, and our website can help when you are planning your municipality work.

Stay tuned…We are venturing into unknown territory in 2015 and reviewing international lobbying and campaign finance laws.  Who knows where this will take us.

In the meantime, State and Federal Communications wishes our clients and friends a very happy holiday season and we looking forward to seeing you in the New Year.

click here to view

Thank you,

Elizabeth Z. Bartz
President and CEO
@elizabethbartz