Throwback Wednesday: Lucas Brinkhuis

A DWARSer in the States

Last April, I was sworn in as a brand new state member of GroenLinks, the start of a special experience as a new state member. As a state member, you enter a totally different world, the world of long meetings (our last meeting started at 13:00 and ended at 19:30), many working visits and new people. A world of documents of thousands of pages from which you get to extract the essence and important points for GroenLinks. Fortunately, we have a good group with experienced people and the provincial officials are always willing to explain. I learn every day and I just enjoy that immensely. About half of the States are also new and that includes a number of young people, especially with Kyra from D66 and Simon from the SP (both of whom have been active for their political youth organisations), a group of young Statesmen quickly emerged who work well together.

For the next four years, I get to deal with the Space and Water and the Citizen Participation portfolios. Space and Water are new to me, so I am also learning about these topics every day. Space is mainly about the many Provincial Inpass Plans (a kind of provincial zoning plans) that come along, here we as GroenLinks make sure that agriculture and nature are nicely balanced and that we achieve the nature goals we have. Water is mainly about the lack of water, the increasingly dry summers. In the east of Overijssel, there is simply too little water, which is why I have requested a working visit together with the Party for the Animals, the SP and the VVD, where we, as members of the provincial executive, will look at the consequences of the drought so that we can take action. It may sound a bit crazy to schedule a visit after the summer about drought, but this is really about the long-term effects.

The second portfolio I have is the Civic Participation portfolio. I notice that the States are just incredibly distant from the people of Overijssel and I would like to bridge that gap. Among young people in particular, this gap is huge. That is why, after the summer, I will start writing a package of initiative proposals to bridge this gap. I am going to form a working group for the writing, so if you feel like joining me in thinking about civic participation, please sign up, I could really use the opinions of fellowDWARSers!

Finally, I would like to say, if you have something that you think the States can do something with, please app me! Even if you just want to come and have a look!