NCRA’s 2015 Legislative Agenda

Adam FinkelNCRA Director, Government Relations

Dave Wenhold, CAE, PLCMiller/Wenhold Capitol Strategies

NCRA’s Legislative Priorities

• Training for Realtime Writers Grants

• Local Courthouse Safety Act

• Regulatory Issues

Training for Realtime Writers Grants

• The Training for Realtime Writers grant program was created to help train more captioners to meet the need of the estimated 48 million American who are deaf or hard of hearing.

• Court reporting programs are able to apply to the Department of Education for grants to recruit more students and improve teaching techniques.

• To date, over $20 million has been distributed to court reporting programs since the early 2000s because of NCRA’s lobbying efforts.

History of the Program• In the early 2000s, NCRA was approached by groups

representing individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing asking for a solution to the shortage of captioners working in the marketplace to meet the needs .

• Court reporting programs, led by NCRA’s government relations efforts, began to seek Congressional earmarks to help recruit more realtime-ready court reporters and captioners.

• From 2001 to 2009, over $15 million in Congressional earmarks were awarded to court reporting programs.

History of the Program

• In 2008-2009, Congress stopped providing earmarks.

• NCRA rolled the Training for Realtime Writers grants into the Higher Education Act which passed and was authorized for five years.

• Court reporting programs were awarded between $900,000 and $1.2 million a year from 2010 to 2014.

Higher Education Act

• The Higher Education Act is up for reauthorization and Congress has begun that process.

• NCRA is meeting with key offices to ensure that the grants will be part of the final package.

What Can We Do?• Contact Congress

– Templates have been created to submit Letters of Support to Senators and House Representatives.

– Letter of Support to both Senators and House Representatives.

• Spread the word to your members about the importance of NCRA’s legislative initiative to all court reporters and ask for letters of support.

HEA Timeline

• Congress expects to have a final bill out of both the House and Senate by the August recess.

• After a conference process with key leaders in the House and Senate to rectify differences in the two bills, the stated goal is to have a final version on the President’s desk by the end of the year.

Local Courthouse Safety Act

• NCRA has long been involved with issues related to courthouse safety.

• Currently, there is an average of one violent incident a month at courthouses around the country.

Courthouse safety• Many courthouses, especially those in rural areas,

lack even the most basic security options like metal detectors, baggage screeners, or wands.

• September 2011: A defendant opened fire in the Crawford Co. Courthouse (Arkansas)

• December 2011: A defendant retrieved a gun from his car and walked into the Cook Co. Courthouse (Minnesota), shooting three court employees.

Local Courthouse Safety Act

• In response, the Local Courthouse Safety Act (S. 2076) was introduced in February 2012 by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) with Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) signing on as the lead co-sponsor.

• Supporting organizations include NCRA, the National Sheriffs Association, the National Association for Court Management, the Conference of Chief Justices, and the American Judges Association.

What the bill does• Allows for “states” to apply to the Department of

Justice for excess security equipment that currently is sitting in a storage facility in Texas.– $184 million according to a May 9, 2012 report from

the joint staffs of the House Oversight and Transportation committees

• Updates the State Justice Institute’s mission statement to cover courthouse safety and authorizes it to award grants for courthouse security improvements.

What the bill does, cont.

• Provides statutory authorization for the Justice Department’s VALOR Initiative:– The VALOR initiative is a pilot project that trains

law enforcement officers how to anticipate, respond to, and survive violent encounters.

Excess security equipment? • The TSA has spent $184 million on excess security

equipment, anticipating an increased demand on items like metal detectors, baggage screeners and wands.

• This equipment sits unused in a warehouse in Texas, and the government has no plans for it at this time.

• Most of the equipment was purchased in the past year, with some of the equipment sitting unused for over six years. The value of the equipment depreciates over time.

Regulatory Issues• HIPAA

– Testimony with the National Ombudsmen– Meetings with the Small Business Administration– Follow up with Department of Health and Human Services

• Captioning Quality– NCRA has worked with the FCC on recent captioning quality

rulemakings. – Further meetings with key stakeholders on related issues like

metrics and POTS lines. – Working with consumer organizations through the FCC’s

Disability Advisory Committee.