WASFAA
Federal Relations Committee
Minutes – July 23, 2009
The WASFAA Federal Relations Committee met by conference call to discuss our committee
priorities, action items and pending legislation.
Committee members participating on the call included:
Vicki Shipley, NCHELP
Tami Sato, Southern CA College of Optometry
Janet Cantelon, Seattle University
Marilyn Ponti, Whitman College
Kevin Jensen, College of Western Idaho
Elizabeth Ziegelbein, Career Academy
Committee member Pat Hurley, Glendale College, was unable to join this call.
This was the first meeting of the WASFAA 2009/10 Federal Relations Committee and we
reviewed what action items we would take up as a committee and what we hoped to
accomplish. WASFAA members appreciate getting regular, concise, federal updates of
issues and pending legislation and this we will continue through the WASFAA listserv. We
all will contribute more detailed information through WASFAA newsletter articles. Through
conference calls we can discuss current issues and decide what needs to be provided to
WASFAA members so that they are kept aware. Advocacy is provided on two levels: first by
providing information and letter templates to members so that they can contact their
congressional leaders; or second by developing a position letter that we would seek
WASFAA executive council approval to send as a regional voice.
When we send letters we usually target the members on the House Education Workforce
Committee or the Senate HELP Committee or if applicable the Budget Committee members.
In the WASFAA region we had a strong tie with the CA leaders, McKeon and Miller.
Sometimes the time to make noise is during recesses when the congressional leaders are
home and can be contacted locally or messages can be sent to their staff in DC. To do:
Kevin Jensen said he could write up an article about these advocacy strategies for the next
WASFAA newsletter.
These were agenda items that we discussed:
1) HR3221 – Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 (SAFRA)
Movement for this bill is affected by the stalled healthcare bill that might be difficult to get
done before the August recess. It is possible that the House will turn to education issues.
We can start working on the Senate before they take up a similar bill by drafting a letter to
Enzi and Kennedy. To Do: Tami will start a very rough draft of a letter that we could use for
discussion. To Do: Pat Hurley has offered to try and get some of the main talking points
from SAFRA that we can provide WASFAA members to comment on.
2) FAFSA Simplification – We discussed the revealing at the recent NASFAA Annual
Conference of the changes to the FAFSA which would include the option for students and
families to download tax information directly into the FAFSA on the Web product. This would
negate the need to do verification. It looked great but details have not been provided. Tax
data might not be available until after July, which would be too late to be of use for most
offices. The alternative would be use prior-prior year tax data. This led to an extensive
discussion about how this would affect different types of financial aid offices. Financial aid
offices have already seen an increase in appeals and special circumstances due to the
recession and state of the economy. The numbers of appeals could increase if we start to
look at tax data from two years ago. To Do: Kevin Jensen and Elizabeth Ziegelbein will
work on writing up these concerns so that we can let the Department of Education know the
implications/problems of data too late or too early. Kevin stated he was on the NASFAA
Technology Issues Committee and one of their charges was the FAFSA Simplification so
he’ll keep us up on what they do.
3) Year-Round Pell – We all welcomed the new year-round Pell Grant but the outcome of
the recent negotiated rulemaking failed to reach consensus mainly because of the
Department’s interpretation of the statutory phrase “accelerate the student’s progress”. The
DE feels that this means that students must be attending full-time for the first two semesters
but financial aid administrators feel the statutory language includes part-time students. This
would be especially true of a student attending a summer term part-time. This issue needs
more discussion and perhaps input from the WASFAA region. To Do: Kevin Jensen and
Elizabeth Ziegelbein said they would send the committee more information on this and
maybe formulate a letter. (Note: NASFAA and the Association of Community Colleges
wrote a letter on 6/10/09 on this topic to Arne Duncan)
These are the three items that we have identified as priorities for now and we will pick up the
discussion at our next meeting on August 6th at 1:00 p.m. PST. To Do: Pat Hurley has
volunteered use of their conference call system and we will take her up on that. Pat can you
set this next conference call meeting? Would be a maximum of 7 attendees and would be
only for one hour.
Great discussion and feedback! Thanks!