Note: Palatiello wrote a tribute to Ronald Reagan and his creation of National Surveyors Week in our July-August 2004 issue HERE
Following about five years of retaining an outside independent lobbyist and then a national law and lobbying firm, the American Congress on Surveying (ACSM), the predecessor to NSPS, decided to create an in-house government affairs program and hire staff to manage the activity in 1981. This decision coincided with a proposed “consolidation” or merger between ACSM and the American Society of Photogrammetry (ASP), later renamed the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). A joint board known as the Council of Mapping, Photogrammetry, and Surveying Societies (COMPASS) was formed to develop a consolidation plan. In the transition to a combined organization, joint programs in education and government affairs were formed. I was hired as the first Joint Government Affairs Director in January of 1982.
The surveying and mapping profession had experienced several adverse legislative and government affairs decisions and actions that needed correction. The “Brooks Act”, providing for qualification based selection of firms as contractors for architecture, engineering and related services by Federal agencies, enacted in 1972, had been considered to apply to surveying and mapping contracts, but these services were removed from the law by bid protest decisions rendered by the Comptroller General of the United States in 1977. The controversial Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, after previously being vetoed by President Gerald Ford in 1975. It specified that engineers or geologists shall be lead professionals authorized to prepare cross-section maps or plans of the land to be affected in a surface mining permit application, usurping and preempting most state laws that define such activities as the practice of land surveying. Numerous other Federal activities defined or classified surveying and mapping as less than a professional activity, regarded surveyors as members of an occupation that was not recognized as a profession, and did not recognize licensed surveyors as professionals.
My task as Joint Government Affairs Director was to lobby Congress and Federal agencies to restore, elevate, and define surveying as a profession.
While the groundwork to remedy the aforementioned disadvantageous laws and policies was being laid, it became apparent that the surveying profession lacked the experience or ability to engage in grass roots lobbying by individual surveyors. My memory, and NSPS’s records, fail to document who originated the idea for National Surveyors Week, but Don Bender of California, 1982 NSPS President and Paul Lapham of Michigan, a NSPS past president and chair of the ACSM-ASPRS Joint Government Affairs Committee, were instrumental. My experience as a Congressional staff professional prior to coming to ACSM included leading the effort to pass a Congressional resolution to authorize the President to proclaim the week that includes Thanksgiving as National Family Week was an important part of the decision to pursue a similar effort to establish Surveyors Week.
In those days, hundreds of commemorative resolutions were introduced in Congress each year. Some members of Congress, staff, and citizens believed Congress was spending too much time on things like building naming, postage stamps, commemorative coins, Congressional Gold Medals, memorials, and designating special days, weeks, months, and anniversaries at the expense of more substantive legislation to address national priorities. At the time, the House had a protocol that a commemorative resolution, once introduced, needed 218 cosponsors, one-half of the members of the House, and the Senate required 25 cosponsors, divided among senators from both political parties, in order for a committee of jurisdiction to act on a resolution to triage in favor of those with significant support. (In 1995, the House adopted a rule still in effect today that prohibits commemorative resolutions.) Many congressmen and senators would only cosponsor a commemorative resolution if they received a request from a constituent. In order to secure the necessary cosponsors, and to engage in a drill to introduce surveyors to grass roots lobbying and communication with their federal representatives in preparation for more substantive forthcoming legislative efforts, the National Surveyors Week project was launched. That was not to say there were no surveyors who were politically active and astute, nor without strong personal relationships with their congressman or senators. NSPS member P. Porcher “Shay” Gregg of Virginia Beach, Virginia and Ferrell Prosser of Florence, South Carolina volunteered to secure sponsors for the Surveyors Week resolution. They were immediately successful as Representative G. William Whitehurst (R-VA) and Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC) committed to introducing House and Senate resolutions, respectively.
Concurrent with this effort was the establishment of the ACSM-NSPS Political Action Committee (PAC) on April 1, 1982
On October 1, 1982, Senator Thurmond introduced Senate Joint Resolution (S. J. Res.) 263, to authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating the week beginning on March 13, 1983, as “National Surveyors Week”. NSPS members, Senator Thurmond, and I immediately went to work. Having garnered 35 cosponsors (20 Republicans, 15 Democrats), the resolution was discharged from the Committee on Judiciary and passed by the full Senate on a voice vote on December 10, 1982. On September 9, 1982, Representative Whitehurst introduced House Joint Resolution (H.J. Res.) 591, to authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating the week beginning on March 13, 1983, as “National Surveyors Week”. However, having only secured 167 cosponsors, the Whitehurst resolution, as well as Thurmond’s Senate-passed resolution, died in a House committee when Congress adjourned at the end of 1982.
While the NSPS membership was deeply disappointed, but neither deflated nor discouraged. Instructed by the adage popularized by then-Speaker of the House Thomas J. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. (D-MA) that “all politics is local”, NSPS redoubled its efforts and committed to securing the requisite cosponsors on new resolutions in both the House and Senate. The failure of the first effort to pass a Congressional resolution did not deter the surveying community. During the 1983 ACSM-ASP convention in March, Surveyors Week was nonetheless launched. Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), sponsor of legislation to reinstate the surveyor as a lead professional in the Surface Mining Act was a speaker. The first PAC reception was held at the Capitol Hill Club, attracting scores of the association’s members and numerous lawmakers. This was a precursor for today’s annual “Day on the Hill”. A special National Surveyors Week campaign button was worn by members throughout the convention. Even without a Congressional resolution or Presidential proclamation, state proclamations designating Surveyors Week were issued by the governors of Pennsylvania and Wyoming and a feature was published in the newsletter of the Defense Mapping Agency, among other observances.
On March 2, 1983, Senator Thurmond introduced S.J. Res. 44, to authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating the week beginning on March 11, 1984, as “National Surveyors Week. Building on the groundwork of the previous year, it was introduced with 31 cosponsors. And when the magic 35th cosponsor (18 Republicans 16 Democrats joined Thurmond) signed onto the resolution on March 17, it was immediately discharged from the Judiciary Committee, of which Thurmond was chairman, and passed by the Senate on that same day. It was sent to the House and referred to the Committee on Post office and Civil Service. Meanwhile, determined to work with NSPS and not fall short again, Representative Whitehurst started earlier by introducing H.J. Res. 103 on January 26, 1983. While it took a sustained effort, this time the NSPS effort was successful. The Whitehurst resolution secured its 218th cosponsor on November 9, 1983 (and then added six more, getting to a total of 224), the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service was discharged from further consideration of Thurmond’s S.J. Res.44 and the full House unanimously passed the resolution on November 17. A resolution to authorize the President to issue a proclamation designating the week beginning on March 11, 1984, as “National Surveyors Week” was on its way to President Ronald Reagan who signed it into law, Public Law 98-182, on November 30, 1983.
While the lobbying effort ended, the public relations effort needed to begin. I developed a guidebook that outlined suggested activities to observe Surveyors Week with tips on everything from working with the local news media to planning an event. The program won a national association award and earned publicity for ACSM. The effort stimulated activity by numerous state surveying societies, government agencies, and individual surveyors and firms.
Among the most notable public relations success was a special project carried out by the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) to measure the extent to which the Washington Monument was subsiding. It was featured on the CBS Evening News that ended with a dramatic simulation showing the monument sinking at a much more rapid rate than the NGS crew found while Walter Cronkite signed off with his signature “and that’s the way it is” one evening during Surveyors Week in March of 1984. A subsequent feature in the Mini Page, a nationally syndicated supplement carried in hundreds of newspapers, educated youngsters on how maps are made.
The PAC reception grew exponentially from its inaugural foray the previous year, attracting over 130 ACSM-NSPS members and more than 40 legislators.
It is interesting to reflect on the House and Senate members who helped pass National Surveyors Week. No Senate cosponsor remains in the Senate today. Rep. Ron Wyder (D-OR), a cosponsor as a House member, is now a senior U.S. Senator, while Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) is the only member of the Senate in 1983 still serving today, but he was not a cosponsor. Among House members in 1983, only 4 are still in the House today, Reps. Hal Rogers (R-KY), Chris Smith (R-NJ), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH.) Hoyer and Kaptur were cosponsors. The House cosponsors also included two future Vice Presidents of the United States – Al Gore, Jr. and Richard Cheney. Cheney’s brother was a surveyor with the National Park Service and an ACSM/NSPS member. Several House cosponsors went on to serve as Governors, U.S. Senators, Speaker of the House, and Cabinet members, but are no longer in those positions.
The effort to secure a Congressional resolution authorizing President Reagan to issue a National Surveyors Week proclamation also served as a catalyst for effective ACSM-NSPS government affairs activity and success. The Surface Mining Act was amended to reinstate the surveyor as a lead professional by an amendment to an Interior Appropriations bill offered by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), other bills were used as vehicles for amendments to reinstate surveying and mapping in the Brooks Act for military construction projects, the Corps of Engineers, highway, Superfund, and airports projects, and then the original Brooks Act itself was amended to add surveying and mapping in 1987. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency the Department of Labor reaffirmed a longstanding policy that surveying personnel were not deemed “laborers and mechanics” subject to the Davis-Bacon Act and the occupations of Land Surveyor and Photogrammetrist were removed from the department’s list of “apprenticeable” occupations. And the Office of Personnel Management updated its position classification for surveyors employed in the federal government, providing recognition as professionals, among other legislative and policy victories.
Ironically, the proposed consolidation of ACSM and ASP was narrowly rejected by a vote of members of both societies in the fall of 1983 and the joint government affairs program subsequently became solely an ACSM-NSPS activity. But National Surveyors Week was a springboard for giving surveyors an effective voice in Washington, DC that continues to this day.
John Palatiello was ACSM-ASP Joint Government Affairs beginning in 1982 after nearly a decade as a Congressional staff assistant. He was later promoted to Assistant Executive Director for Public Affairs. He formed Jon M. Palatiello & Associates in 1987 and provided consulting services to the surveying and mapping profession for the next 40 years. In 2013, his firm was retained to manage NSPS government affairs in Washington, D.C., and to advocate for the surveying profession at the federal level, a position his current firm, Miller-Wenhold Capitol Strategies, continues to hold.
