031: From Advocacy to Law: Tom Alongi & Patricia Madsen on The Alec & Lydia Act| Part 1

So my first question is the legislation, the Alec and Lydia Act, House Bill 2995.

What kind of got you into writing this legislation? What was that process? And I know that this is important to me because Alec and Lydia were my children, but I would love to hear any and all things on your side of things.

I insist that Patricia go first on this.

Oh, well, I did.

I did.

Okay.

It is my fault.

Yeah, it really is.

But go ahead.

for the past couple of sessions.

So civil legal aid organizations that we can do, you know, of course, direct services, individual cases, but we're also permitted to do things like serve on committees that make court rules and things like that.

And we're also permitted to do legislative advocacy if we follow certain regulations, which I have followed all the regulations.

So it's important for me to get that in there.

So I think it was not this past session, but the session before, that I was invited to sit in a stakeholder meeting with Representative Lisa Fink, Representative Rachel Keschel.

One of the initial meetings involved Senator Mark Fincham and a host of other people that really were talking about the issues that they really wanted to resolve.

And two sessions back, Representative Keschel had introduced a raft of family court bills that I had not seen in many, many years.

So it was obvious that the legislature, at least certain members of the legislature, were really starting to focus on family law.

And then there were the ad hoc joint legislative kind of hearings where a lot of parents showed up to talk about their problems with family court.

And kind of at the same time, different parents groups, including representatives from Arizona Safe Parents, were showing up at these court meetings, these committee meetings, so rules meetings, the Committee on Family Court.

And I've been on that particular committee for about seven years since it was formed.

And so I just... all of kind of all at once there was this additional focus on family law and specifically on victims of domestic violence and their children and and how family law processes and procedures and those decisions that were being made really negatively impacting people and their children um so it ended up this session um representative fink asked um you know what what would really be impactful and really suggested that we focus on rewriting what is 25403.03 in the child custody statutes, the statute that focuses specifically on domestic violence.

And, you know, that's what I call Tom.

So it's like there's one of those

things of, We have a history with this.

I mean, not to put everything out at the beginning, but Tom and I were both around when some significant legislative changes were made in 2012 and 2013.