One of the Congressional issues Chwat & Co. is following for ARRL may come up in the next few weeks, prior to the August recess of Congress. It relates to legislation to raise from 14 cents to 55 cents per mile the amount for tax deduction for volunteers' auto mileage. This will benefit ARRL's volunteers who are not eligible for reimbursement by the League for their mileage when they volunteer for us. Members of the Senate Committee on Finance are being urged to include this provision in a tax bill scheduled for mark-up soon. Fourteen Divisions have Senators on this committee. The DLACs in those Divisions will be asked to work on generating letters to the relevant Senators, and I am going to write to all the Senators. To avoid clogging your inbox with irrelevant stuff, I am going to send each Director and Vice Director individually the sample letters pertaining to states in your Division. Any help in getting letters written will be very much appreciated. As usual, please fax letters to Chwat's office (703-684-7594) or make a pdf scan of the signed letter and e-mail it as an attachment to john.chwat@chwatco.com.

From what John Chwat told us at our meeting, it looks like the ARRL is the only charitable organization that cares enough about its volunteers to be actively supporting this change. Let's do what we can to put our mouth where the volunteers' money is.

Thanks & 73 - Kay N3KN