John Chwat called me this afternoon to discuss the problem of state legislation of potential concern to us being omitted from the reports. There have been three cases recently, involving bills in Nevada and Texas in addition to the Illinois bill that Kermit flagged earlier today. Chwat & Co. subscribes to an online service that for $300/month scans all state legislation and identifies the bills that correspond to specified search criteria. You might think that if a bill is overlooked, it is because the search criteria are set too tight. In fact the problem is the opposite: over time the criteria have become too loose, causing John's staff to manually review thousands of bills to cull the wheat from the chaff. This happened through the best of intentions as keywords were added to address a growing number of concerns. Specifically, since December 2010 the service has reported 6,101 state bills containing keywords that were on the list for ARRL. Of these, 1,618 contained a reference to "covenants" of which very few were of interest -- but each one had to be examined. Similarly, 2,432 bills contained a reference to "radio." Of the remaining 2,000 or so bills, almost half relate to distracted driving or to the use of wireless or handheld devices by drivers. This is a category of concern for us that almost did not exist just a few years ago but is one that of course we must monitor now. The keyword list John gave me includes "FCC" or "Federal Communications Commission" that supposedly appears in 579 bills. That seemed high to me and John is checking to see why. The rest of the list is not overwhelming. Based on our discussion this afternoon, John is removing "radio" from the search criteria unless it appears near any of the words "amateur," "ham," "emergency," "spectrum," "frequency," "transmission," or "apparatus." He is also removing "covenants" although we are looking for words to pair with it that would bring the matches down to a manageable level. John is embarrassed by the omissions. If these changes do not lead to an improvement we will look for other solutions. 73, Dave Sumner, K1ZZ

Thanks for the information, Dave. This is good information. One of our SM's who is fortunate to have a very proactive SGL mentioned to me that a few bills concerning amateur radio in his state (NC) were missed in the Chwat SLR. He had asked me about the search criteria that Chwat uses. Those SM's in our division that use the Chwat SLR find it very useful (at least as supplemental information). '73 de JIM N2ZZ ARRL Vice Director Roanoke Division ARRL, the national association for Amateur RadioT -----Original Message----- From: arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org [mailto:arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org] On Behalf Of Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 5:35 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:19886] Re: State Legislative Report John Chwat called me this afternoon to discuss the problem of state legislation of potential concern to us being omitted from the reports. There have been three cases recently, involving bills in Nevada and Texas in addition to the Illinois bill that Kermit flagged earlier today. Chwat & Co. subscribes to an online service that for $300/month scans all state legislation and identifies the bills that correspond to specified search criteria. You might think that if a bill is overlooked, it is because the search criteria are set too tight. In fact the problem is the opposite: over time the criteria have become too loose, causing John's staff to manually review thousands of bills to cull the wheat from the chaff. This happened through the best of intentions as keywords were added to address a growing number of concerns. Specifically, since December 2010 the service has reported 6,101 state bills containing keywords that were on the list for ARRL. Of these, 1,618 contained a reference to "covenants" of which very few were of interest -- but each one had to be examined. Similarly, 2,432 bills contained a reference to "radio." Of the remaining 2,000 or so bills, almost half relate to distracted driving or to the use of wireless or handheld devices by drivers. This is a category of concern for us that almost did not exist just a few years ago but is one that of course we must monitor now. The keyword list John gave me includes "FCC" or "Federal Communications Commission" that supposedly appears in 579 bills. That seemed high to me and John is checking to see why. The rest of the list is not overwhelming. Based on our discussion this afternoon, John is removing "radio" from the search criteria unless it appears near any of the words "amateur," "ham," "emergency," "spectrum," "frequency," "transmission," or "apparatus." He is also removing "covenants" although we are looking for words to pair with it that would bring the matches down to a manageable level. John is embarrassed by the omissions. If these changes do not lead to an improvement we will look for other solutions. 73, Dave Sumner, K1ZZ _______________________________________________ arrl-odv mailing list arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org http://reflector.arrl.org/mailman/listinfo/arrl-odv