Hal Hiemstra

HAL HIEMSTRA

PARTNER

Meet Hal

Hal Hiemstra has more than 30 years of experience in government affairs. He represents a wide range of public and private sector clients on issues involving transportation, aviation, appropriations and other federal funding, economic development, infrastructure, community health and safety, and the environment. He has specialized knowledge in federal transportation policy and understands how transportation investments can make communities more livable and sustainable. He has assisted clients in securing surface transportation funding, developing significant streetcar and transit projects, implementing regional planning and design efforts, and passing federal legislative changes that resolve unique client challenges.

Mr. Hiemstra has helped clients secure millions of dollars in federal grants and congressionally directed funding for highway, bridge, aviation, water and wastewater infrastructure projects, health care facility development, juvenile justice initiatives, drug enforcement and policing programs, shoreline restoration, and rail development. He designed and helped to secure Congressional passage of a national pilot program on the redevelopment of airport impacted properties. He was instrumental in developing a national pilot program on short-haul rail infrastructure development, and helped to lead a national lobbying strategy to secure investment tax credits for freight rail car manufacturing in the United States. Mr. Hiemstra has authored federal legislation limiting the exposure of local airport operators to ever-increasing fees associated with the operation of contract control towers, and successfully lobbied for federal funding that led to the redevelopment of a modern U.S. streetcar manufacturing industry.

Prior to becoming a founding partner with Summit Strategies, Mr. Hiemstra was a non-attorney partner at Ball Janik LLP from 1998 to January, 2015. Prior to that, Mr. Hiemstra worked on national transportation and agriculture issues for nearly two decades, was the Vice President for National Policy at the Rails to Trails Conservancy and VP for Policy at Scenic America, chaired a bicycle industry sponsored national grassroots campaigns on federal transportation policy, and directed the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture Research Foundation – a national research foundation focused on agricultural and farmland policy issues.  He served as a consultant to the Carter Administration’s National Agriculture Lands Study and in 1991 was appointed to the National Scenic Byways Commission by President George H. W. Bush.

Mr. Hiemstra has worked on every national surface transportation reauthorization since ISTEA (1991) and during the debate of reauthorization of SAFETEA-LU, Mr. Hiemstra served as a political and policy advisor to Transportation for America, a national transportation coalition made up of more than 500 groups and organizations seeking to align national transportation policies with an array of issues such as economic opportunity, climate change, energy security, health, housing and community development.

Mr. Hiemstra actively serves on the Board of Directors of the Luther I Replogle Foundation a private family foundation supporting a variety of social service objectives, actively raises private funding for various school initiatives and previously served as president of his children’s PTA,  and has served as President or a board member on a variety of boards and tasks forces at the Historic New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.  He has also served on the Board and is a past President of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), a nonprofit bicycle advocacy and education membership association serving the Washington, D.C. region.

LET’S GET TO WORK

 

Our ability to think strategically, establish alliances and work effectively with politically diverse interests is the foundation of our success on behalf of clients.

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