[nfbmi-talk] Washington Seminar Extended Wrap Up

[J.J. Meddaugh]

Following is an extended report from Washington Seminar 2015.

The NFB of Michigan was represented well at this year's Washington 
Seminar, the NFB's largest legislative advocacy event of the year. Our 
delegation this year included Jeff Crouch, Georgia Kitchen, Terri 
Wilcox, Christine Boone, Hayley Balogh, and myself. Hayley is a student 
at the Louisiana Center for the Blind but originally from Michigan, and 
Christine has lots of Michigan ties. The other four were sponsored by 
the affiliate.

We were able to meet directly with nearly half of our representatives 
and senators directly this year including Senator Stabenow, Rep. Upton 
(Kalamazoo), Rep. Bishop (Lansing), Rep. Debbie Dingell (Ann Arbor), 
Rep. Kildee (Flint), Rep. benishek (northern Michigan), and Rep. Trott 
(Livonia/Troy). In the other offices, we met either with their chief of 
staff or legislative aids who had an education or labor focus.

Legislative Issues

The TIME Act was the first of our issues this year, and is the new name 
for the former fair wages bill. This bil is H.R. 188 and would phase out 
the use of special wage certificates which allow employers, most of 
which are nonprofits, to pay less than the minimum wage. There are over 
60 such certificate holders in Michigan, but also examples where an 
employer has transitioned away from this model, including Midwest 
Enterprises for the Blind in Kalamazoo and Goodwill of Southwest 
Michigan. Many representatives were quite interested in the bill, more 
so than we've seen in the past. Rep. Upton agreed to come back on as a 
cosponsor and did the very next day. We feel this will help us in 
getting other reps to sign on, especially some of the newly-elected 
members. Rep. Conyers signed on to the bill lass session and we expect 
him to sign on again soon. There are several others who we feel are good 
shots to sign on and I'll address next steps at the end of this report.

The 2nd issue deals with education and the lack of accessible materials. 
The TEACH Act would create voluntary guidelines for universities to 
follow which would help them purchase textbooks, online tools, and other 
materials which are accessible. We are waiting to introduce a new TEACH 
Act bill until some further meetings with publishers and university 
stakeholders are completed. At that point, we'll make a bigger push to 
get members on board. Several Michigan members expressed interest in 
seeing the language when it is proposed, and we will follow up.

The Marrakesh Treaty would allow for books in alternative formats to be 
sent across borders. Currently, this practice is illegal, meaning that 
books created by libraries for the blind in other countries cannot 
legally be imported here. This causes lots of duplication and a lack of 
access. We used an example of a student who had to drop a Spanish minor 
in their university because the books they needed were available in 
Spain but not here. Terri often pointed out that every English speaking 
country in the world created their own braille edition of Harry Potter.

This treaty will need to be ratified by the Senate, and this was the 
first time that many senators, including Senator Stabenow, had heard of 
the treaty. Hopefully our education will help in it being passed.

Follow-up

Many of you have asked what we can do as an affiliate after Washington 
Seminar. At this point, the biggest area of focus is to ask for 
cosponsors for the TIME Act, HR 188. You can call or Email your 
representatives, though face-to-face meetings are more effective. If you 
need help scheduling a meeting or need some ideas on talking points, let 
me know. You can also use our legislative fact sheets on the NFB website 
to guide your conversations and share with the members or their staff. 
To those of you who have scheduled meetings locally in the past, thank 
you. I have lots of information on our meetings in D.C. as well as key 
contacts that I'm happy to share with you. Please keep me updated on 
meetings that you schedule and let us know how they go.

Legislative Seminar

Larry asked me to attend the legislative seminar in Baltimore the 
previous weekend. This event was run by the NFB Legislative team and an 
invaluable tool to prepare for the week. The seminar included mock 
meetings with representatives, brainstorming on future advocacy 
activities, and lots of tips and tricks shared by the NFB staff and 
other participants. Since I was already traveling to DC, there was no 
additional cost for the affiliate for this event.

Financials

We ended up under budget for the event, largely because we had an extra 
spot in the female room that we shared with another member. This, 
combined with the use of a certificate and lowered transportation costs, 
saved us nearly $300 from what was budgeted.

Wrap-up

We once again had a wonderful delegation from Michigan this year, and I 
thank everyone who was a part of it. If anyone has any questions about 
Washington Seminar, please don't hesitate to ask. Thank you for the 
opportunity to serve.

-- 
Best regards,
J.J.