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!