R: Today, we’re here to talk about the fast-changing world of policy, funding, and implementation that’s also known as government affairs.
B: Today, I’m really interested to gain a perspective on some of the critical steps that have led to recent successes, as well as what NAPA and members need to do to keep that momentum going.
R: To help us with this conversation today, we’d like to introduce John Hay from CRH America’s Materials and welcome him to the podcast. Welcome, John, and can you just briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?
J: Thank you both for having me on today. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about government relations. I’m John Hay, and I am with CRH. As Richard mentioned, I’ve been with the company, in fact, this is my 20th anniversary year with CRH. I have been in the government relations world with our company and in our industry for my entire career. Glad to be on the call today.
B: John, I was hoping maybe you could share on a high level your perspective on the roles of government affairs teams, both for construction materials companies, as well as trade associations such as NAPA, and kind of how those teams work together on the different things that they’re really focused on.
J: Brett, you raise a very good point. As I said, I have been involved in government relations for 20 years, and what I have found over my career, and as I’ve interacted with our industry through trade associations and my peer companies, government relations is a very integral part of achieving policy goals that significantly impact our industry. In this case, particularly the asphalt paving industry. It’s an opportunity to engage with elected officials that truly can impact what our industry does, how we operate, and our license to do business. As Richard mentioned earlier, they are the policymakers that pass pieces of legislation like the recently passed IIJA, or Infrastructure Investment Act, that will fund infrastructure for our industry for years to come. It’s a very critical component of our business, in my view.
R: There are different types of legislation, pieces of legislation that are cyclical in nature, such as your reauthorizations of, whether it’s the Federal Aviation Administration or highway bills. As you look into some of these recurring pieces of legislation, what are the critical activities or steps that really need to be done in order to help successfully pass a bill or even successfully pass a bill that’s implementable, as you’re looking at it from maybe a company standpoint, but also as that association-company partnership?
J: Richard, you raised a good question, and I think it goes back really to a more fundamental question of what is government relations and why is it important? From my perspective, particularly my company’s perspective, we have been aggressively over the years developing relationships with policymakers, with elected officials. We do it constantly. You don’t do it necessarily just to influence a piece of legislation that might be coming up every few years, like the Highway reauthorization bill that was recently passed, as I mentioned last year, in the IIJA. That’s a recurring piece of legislation that impacts our industry, but there are also, from time to time, situations that arise. It might be a particular aspect of a bill. It might be a regulatory issue. It might be something that arises at the state level that would have an impact, either positive or negative, on asphalt producers in the asphalt pavement industry.
Fundamentally, you want to have a government relations program that has spent a long time developing relationships. You want to have a nonstop approach to developing relationships constantly with elected officials that can influence policy that will influence our industry, whether it’s a recurring piece of legislation like a reauthorization bill or these items that come up from time to time that will impact us. A government relations program, frankly, is something that is ongoing, and one that we need to, in my opinion, need to have at a very high level of attention in our industry.
B: I was curious if maybe there were other things that you need to really take into consideration with some of the non-recurring things that come out. I give the example of the Inflation Reduction Act or something that’s not on that cyclical schedule, but comes out and can have impacts on the industry. Are there any steps that you take when you’re looking at those types of pieces of legislation or policy or things like that coming at us?
J: Brett, I think one of the things that is very important is that you have to constantly be vigilant in watching what pieces of legislation are proposed, whether you do it through somebody like me, in-house, or through a trade association, or through the industry. You mentioned the Inflation Reduction Act, a very good example. While not specifically targeted toward our industry, there are things in that bill that could have an impact on us as an industry. You have to maintain a constant awareness of pieces of legislation that are proposed or introduced.
From our perspective, that’s where our trade associations come into play. NAPA, for example, has a government relations team. We see NAPA’s legislative affairs team’s role as monitoring those types of pieces of legislation or regulatory initiatives that my company might not, for example, be particularly close in paying attention to. We look to our trade association, to NAPA, to follow those issues for us, alert us when things potentially could have an impact. It works both ways, vice versa. We might run across issues, for example, that come up in a state where we operate, where there’s maybe not necessarily an active asphalt pavement association chapter in that state. It’s a sharing of information. You could alert the industry and members of NAPA to issues that might have an impact on the business.
R: It’s not just pieces of legislation that can impact companies and the way things are done in the country, but it’s executive orders and policy directives that sometimes come out in the wake of these types of actions. When you’re thinking about executive orders, what role can companies and even groups like NAPA or other trade associations have to make sure that their voices are heard in either responding to executive orders or in that implementation type process?
J: Richard, I thought you raised a very good point. Policy implementation is critical when it comes to our industry, whether it’s implementing legislation or implementing an executive order. An executive order, it’s an implementation directive, is really what it is. There is an implementation rulemaking process that necessarily follows those kinds of executive orders. The role of our industry and members of our industry is to be responsive when those rulemakings are underway, to provide comments, to have the ability to have input into the rulemaking process.
It’s equally as important, in my mind, that we are able to impact and have the ability to let those policymakers and regulators know what our industry’s position is. To me, it’s equally as important as being involved in the legislative process and being involved in the implementation of the executive order or rulemaking process.
B: John, I’m curious to get your perspective on the importance of grassroots and maybe taking a look at smaller companies that might feel that they don’t really have a voice. I’m wondering what you might say to them to help them understand the importance of engaging and being involved in the legislative process.
J: Great question, Brett. What I would say is this: Grassroots, in my mind, is one of the most critical components of a government relations program, whether you are a huge industry, a large company, a medium-sized company, or a small family-owned business with just a few employees. I come about this a bit from experience. I worked for a member of Congress in a prior life a few years ago, representing my home area in North Alabama where I’m from. The ability of individuals, constituents, people we represented, were the most important aspect of what my boss thought about when it came to casting a vote or determining what his policy position might be.
Having employees in our industry, families of employees in our industry, friends of employees in our industry, raise their voices through grassroots activity is critical because if we aren’t sharing our views with elected officials, I can assure you others are. It may be other industries. It may be other interests. It certainly is other interest groups. A grassroots program is critical, and grassroots is simply the voices of the employees and people in our industry sharing their policy ideas and views with their elected officials. To me, that is a very critical component of a successful government relations initiative.
B: Along that line, do you have ways to help communicate issues to employees to help them engage in that process? Are there ways that companies can kind of help engage their employees on different topics, maybe suggestions or ideas?
J: Absolutely, Brett. We try to communicate fairly regularly with our employees about issues that arise. It might be an email blast. It might be other types of communication. We are pretty active in hosting elected officials at our sites, at our asphalt plants, at our quarries, and other types of operations. We bring elected officials in to meet with our employees. That’s an opportunity not only for us as a company to talk about why engagement with elected officials is important, but it gives that elected official the opportunity to share what their viewpoint is with our employees. They take questions from our employees, giving them the opportunity to tell the elected official what’s on their mind.
I’ll give you a great example. I’m going to brag a little bit. We, in August, hosted over 50 site visits with elected officials around our corporate footprint. We’re a big company, as you know, so we have a lot of locations, but it can be done just as easily by a NAPA member who has one or two asphalt plants. You can invite your local state representative, your local member of Congress, or your local town mayor. There is just a range of opportunities to invite an elected official to come to your facility.
In my mind, there is no better way to engage in grassroots activity than to give your employees and your executives or your company owners the opportunity to engage personally with elected officials. It accomplishes a lot. It shares with the elected officials the importance of that local business in that elected official’s district, city, town, or county. It gives you as an asphalt producer the opportunity to share what’s on your mind of importance in the policy arena with elected officials.
Lots of ways that you can engage. The key to all this is to do it on an ongoing basis. It’s not something you do once every five years when the highway bill comes up for reauthorization. It’s an ongoing process of developing and maintaining relationships with the elected officials that represent us.
B: You just brought up site visits, and I’m just curious if you could give an example of a site visit and some of the takeaways that maybe employees had or maybe your guests, the legislator, whoever you had come and see your site, from that experience?
J: That’s a great question, and I appreciate the opportunity. One comes to mind. It always does. We have an asphalt plant in Poland, Maine, that’s been operating. Pike Industries is our company in Maine. We invited, and this has been a number of years ago, but it’s so poignant to me about the importance of site visits and giving the elected official the opportunity to come see you, see what you do, and understand your business on a firsthand basis. We invited Senator Susan Collins, who’s been a Maine senator for a number of years, to come visit us at Poland, at our asphalt plant.
She comes, and we had a nice visit; she had about an hour. We talked to her about the asphalt industry. We gave her a little tour of the plant. She shook the hands of our employees that were there. She talked with our site operator and did the normal things you do in a site visit.
The last part of the visit, we took her into the control room, the control panel of the plant. We had a third-party truck that was coming to get a load of hot mix. I’ll never forget the plant operator asked Senator Collins, “Would you like to press the red button to initiate the drop of the hot mix into the dump truck?” She froze. She said, “Sure.” So they prepared for the drop. She reached over, she pressed the button, and the hot mix came down, and the driver drives away. It’s a thing we do dozens of times every day. She still talks about us asking her to make the drop. She’s told me multiple times since then how afraid she was. She was going to drop the hot mix on the cab of the truck.
It’s a little anecdotal story, but the point is she remembers to this day the visit to that asphalt plant in Portland, Maine. All I have to do when I see her is mention Pike Industries and mention the asphalt plant, and she immediately goes to that story. That was 15 years ago, and she still talks about that site visit to an asphalt plant in Poland, Maine. It really shows the impact and the power of a personal visit by an elected official to your facility.
R: That’s a great story, John. I think the common perception of some people could be for things like fly-ins, “It’s not a highway bill year, maybe I don’t need to do that.” But coming off of the comment that you made, it’s not a highway bill year. That’s why it’s just as important that I’m still making sure people understand that process. Is that a challenge to help people understand that just because some of these bills are cyclical doesn’t mean that the relationships are?
J: Absolutely, great point, Richard. To give an example, we are currently not in a highway bill year, right? The IIJA was passed a year ago, but it’s being implemented as we speak. It is not a highway bill year.
But as an example, there was a provision in the IIJA that expanded the Buy America provisions to infrastructure construction projects. Our industry, fortunately, was able to get an exemption from some of those provisions. But those provisions are now being implemented through the various agencies that are covered by the IIJA. While this is not a reauthorization year, the upcoming fly-in in May, for example, the annual TCC fly-in in May, is going to be a critical opportunity to make sure that the IIJA is being appropriately and properly implemented. There are always issues that you can discuss with your elected officials regardless of whether this is a highway reauthorization year or not.
R: I think another interesting question is there’s been a lot of turnover in Congress lately on a federal level. I’ll try to let you look at this positively and negatively. What are the opportunities, but also the challenges sometimes that presents someone in government relations when there’s constantly a churn of new bodies and new faces?
J: Richard, that’s the one constant in this world, is that there will be turnover among elected officials. As you know, we had a change in Congress this past November. Every two years, you have a new Congress. Many people who aren’t students of our political world may remember from their civics that the House of Representatives changes every two years. There’s an election every two years, and a significant percentage, as you pointed out, will be new members, regardless of which side of the aisle they may be on. They’re going to be new Republicans and new Democrats in the Congress that frankly don’t know anything about our industry, don’t know anything about our issues. They’re just learning how to be elected officials.
It’s incumbent upon us, frankly, every year, to engage with these new members. The same thing happens at the state legislative level as well. There are always new members of state legislatures that need to be educated. As I said earlier, it’s an ongoing, nonstop process of engaging, building relationships, and educating those elected officials on what’s important to us.
B: I’m kind of interested, across your career, if you maybe have a story of a big win, something that kind of you think of like your role and how this process goes, and something that kind of sticks with you as, “This really made an impact for the industry, or this really helped the company,” or those type of things. Is there something that you could share along that line?
J: Brett, I appreciate the question. I have been in this government relations world for 20 years, and sometimes you see it as an ongoing process without achieving a lot of results, just because you’re constantly developing relationships, you’re talking about policy issues. But one of the big wins recently that I think was meaningful for me because I was involved in it, I mentioned Buy America a little earlier. When the initial drafts of the IIJA were beginning to come out, we did not have exemptions for the asphalt paving industry in the Buy America provisions. That could have had a significant impact.
Working with the NAPA team and a number of us who are NAPA members, we worked very hard with our sister trade associations, NSSGA, PCA, and the NRMCA, to achieve what I think will turn out to be a very significant win for the industry. That is an exemption from Buy America provisions for cement, for aggregates, and for asphalt. I think that from an industry perspective, that very particular issue was very meaningful for me.
The second thing I would say is when I started with, at the time, our company was called Old Castle (some on the call may remember, we’re now CRH, our parent company, CRH). I’ve been involved in trying to achieve a robust, meaningful infrastructure bill for 20 years. The IIJA that we passed last year is the largest infrastructure investment bill since the interstate system was created in the mid-’50s. That really was the culmination of my career, achieving a very, very significant infrastructure investment bill here this past year. It was very meaningful. I think it will have a long-term impact on our industry, and for me, that was a signature achievement to be a part of getting that bill passed.
R: John, we appreciate the time that you spent today with us on the podcast and your experience. Also, I just want to thank you for all of your efforts for the industry in the government relations arena. We’ll look forward to having another conversation with you in the near future.
J: Hey, listen, thanks a lot. I appreciate you all having me on, and I’ve enjoyed being a part of the government relations effort and have enjoyed my relationship with NAPA. Thank you both.
B: I think my big takeaway today was really when we talked about grassroots and some of the ways that companies can communicate with employees or get employees involved. John really touched on the site visits as one of those tools of getting access for employees to interact with their local officials, as well as the opportunities that those site visits create for those local officials or different government agency personnel to come out and actually see what we’re doing in the industry. They see an asphalt plant, see the whole process, and meet the people. That to me really seems like an easy win all around for helping employees really have that opportunity to interact with their elected officials, as well as having elected officials really start to get a better understanding of our industry and the people that work in our industry and how we’re out there working to improve infrastructure and build our roads and highways.
R: One of the major takeaways that I got from this conversation today was even something that I feel like I’ve probably been guilty of in my life. It’s like, “It’s not a year of the highway bill”. I think John did a great job talking about it. It’s really about constantly developing those relationships, especially with the churn that Congress can be, every two years getting a new House and new Senators being elected. It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes having those relationships with people to understand how to get things done.
My encouragement would be for people to get involved, and even on an everyday basis, know those people who are making those decisions that can impact your industry and start developing those relationships and the trust and understanding of how these things can impact their community and the people who live there and work there. That’s when it will really be a partnership, or it will be that government relations work that’s happening, because it stems from that relationship that you have with your elected official.
Hey NAPA
