Welcome to mob advocacy's new blog

Welcome to The State of the States - the new mob advocacy blog.  In this blog, we will share our thoughts on state and local government and political news, interesting or trending legislation and thoughts on life in a small (but growing) start-up firm.

We at mob advocacy are very excited this week.  In addition to launching this blog and preparing for our website to go live, we signed a new client - Student Veterans Advocacy Group (SVAG)!  mob advocacy will manage SVAG's national state legislative campaign aimed at increasing educational opportunities for veterans and their families.  You may not know this, but due to a change in the 2011 GI Bill, veterans can only get reimbursed for the cost of in-state tuition at public colleges and universities.  Since active duty military rarely meet state resident criteria, they are forced to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition.  That cost usually makes it too expensive to attend.  We say, Vets have sacrificed... Vets have earned it... so, Let Vets Go!  (if you see #LetVetsGo on twitter, please retweet, especially to your governor and state legislators) 

At the end of the week, mob advocacy will be attending the summer meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) in Williamsburg, Virginia.  The NGA meetings are a great opportunity to build relationships with governors and their key staff members, discuss issues our clients are currently having or expect to have in the next legislative session, and learn about the important issues facing our state governments (and sometimes even sharing ideas for solving them).  mob advocacy will represent our clients at the meeting.  Should you be one of them?  If you have legislative or regulatory issues in your state (or several states), we should talk.

Healthcare is always a big discussion at NGA meetings. With the recent U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision upholding most of the Affordable Care Act this meeting will be no different.  Many governors and state legislatures will spend the next twelve months deciding if and how to implement some, all or none of the law.  Health exchanges and the optional Medicaid expansion will certainly be hot topics.  Almost no one thought SCOTUS would decide to make Medicaid expansion optional, not even the National Association of State Medicaid Directors [read a great article here].  Now several governors, like Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) [article] , have announced they are not expanding their Medicaid programs and others, such as Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ) [article], are weighing the options.

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to comment, suggest a topic, ask a question.  Follow my twitter feed (@mob_advocacy) throughout the NGA meeting (#NGA2012) , and look for our post-NGA wrap up next week.

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