Fellow Directors,
By now you’ve
probably had the opportunity at least to skim through the three documents
President Harrison forwarded to you concerning the Board’s Legislative Action
Program (LAP). Specifically, the documents
are the Legislative Action Assistant (LAA) Handbook, the LAP Volunteer
Qualifications and the LAP FAQ.
Please note that the LAA Handbook has been revised considerably since
the draft you received at the July meeting.
The ad hoc Legislative Action Committee prepared the three
documents in response to comments, questions and suggestions the Board family
directed to us. We thank you for
these ideas. We hope that the
availability of the documents will prove useful to you and your staffs in
fleshing out the LAP organizations in your Divisions. As Congress reconvenes in 2007, I believe you can foresee
the potential value that a going LAP will offer to ARRL and Amateur Radio. We on the Committee realize there is no
magic switch to throw that will make a fully staffed, fine-tuned Program appear
overnight. Developing the total
Program may require months and even years. Even so, one will never reach ultimate success unless one
begins . . . at the beginning.
Paraphrasing the comment made by my fellow Purdue Bands trombonist Neil
Armstrong as he stepped onto the moon, I am confident that what we are beginning
as “One small step for ARRL” soon will become “One giant leap for Amateur
Radio.”
In addition to the
documents you’ve received, the Committee plans to work with our HQ staff to
upgrade the Grassroots
area of our web site’s Members Only section so that it will become still more useful
to our LAP volunteers. In
addition, we’ve vastly improved the skit that was presented Thursday evening
before the July meeting and that depicted a lobby visit by Legislative Action
Assistants Bill and David with “Sen.” Chwat. Thanks to the excellent assistance of Harold Kramer and
support of President Harrison and CEO Sumner, a professional production team is
shooting the improved skit in early October. We expect it to be edited for release for your use before
the end of the year. The skit
should prove very useful in showing candidates for appointment in the Program
that typical hams can successfully conduct lobby visits with Congressmen and
just what can be expected to occur when these visits take place.
One final thought
that comes to mind is that you may have identified additional tools you would
like the Committee to develop to assist you in developing the Program in your
Divisions. If you think of any
such tools, please E-mail or telephone me or another member of the
Committee. We’ll be happy to see
what we can do.
Let us know if you
have any questions about the documents you’ve recently received. These were developed after much thought
by the Committee, several fellow Directors, a couple of officers and a staff
member here and there. Regardless
of the breadth of the input, I am sure that none of us on the Committee believe
there is no room for improvement. Therefore,
your continuing input is solicited.
Tnx for your help,
73,
Jim Weaver, Chair
For the ad hoc Legislative Action Committee
Bill Edgar, N3LLR
Frank Fallon, N2FF
Jim Fenstermaker,
K9JF
David Woolweaver,
K5RAV
Jim
Weaver, K8JE, Director
Great Lakes Division, ARRL
5065
Bethany Rd., Mason, OH 45040
Tel.
513-459-0142; E-mail k8je@arrl.org
ARRL, the Reason Amateur Radio is!
Members, the Reason ARRL is!