The Edge January/February 2026

PROTECTING YOUR BUSINESS

Don’t Be on the Menu: How To Stop Harmful Legislation Before It Starts

By Jill Odom

WITH ROUGHLY 14,000 LOCAL JURISDICTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES, IT’S hard to stay on top of all the proposed legislation that could negatively impact the landscape industry.

often business owners find themselves at a loss of who to talk to because they failed to be involved early on. “It’s that old cliché,” Mann says. “You don’t want to be on the menu. So in order to get off the menu you have to create a seat at the table for yourself.” Mann encourages landscape pro fessionals to be recognized as the local experts in their area. You can start by advertising on the local radio station, volunteering, or sponsoring a local Little League team so people begin to recog nize your brand. “Once that starts to happen, and you begin to have recognition within the community that you’re the expert, when something first comes up, the elected official who you donated to that person’s campaign, even though they may be in the other party, goes, ‘Well, we should “You want to kill it early and you want to kill it dead, and the best way to do that is to have a substantive conversation with either the elected official or their staff member prior to when the committee hearing occurs. We’re talking in positive tones, constructive tones. We want to educate. We want to illuminate, and we don’t want to be derisive of the other side either.” - Bob Mann, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs for NALP.

encourages members to let the NALP government affairs team know. “Many times we find out about it at the very last moment,” Mann says. “Now, we’ve already lost. We can go and get our three minutes in, but we needed to be part of that process well in advance. That’s why it’s important to have people engaged.” Mann says once the NALP team is aware, they can mobilize to get others in volved and set up meetings with the key people involved ahead of the committee meeting. Whether it’s pesticides, fertilizers or any number of other issues that may impact a landscape business, Mann says

However, it becomes far easier to track when NALP members are involved in the community, read the local newspaper and participate in the political processes in their area. “If we allow people to make decisions based, not upon science or expertise or with the consultation of people who know what they’re doing, and rather on emotion, you get bad outcomes,” says Bob Mann, senior director of regulatory and technical affairs for NALP. “Being plugged into the community is nothing more than just reading the local news paper.” Once you do become aware of a troublesome piece of legislation, Mann

24 The Edge // January/February 2026