Monroe County Council of the Blind

MCCB President Mary Ann Alexander is attending and reporting from the ACB Legislative Seminar in Washington D.C. Below is her first submission. Check back throughout for more details and post seminar analysis.

Beth Brelje and I left our homes in the Pocono’s at around 11:00 a.m. to
begin our journey to Washington D.C. for the American Council of the
Blind’s Legislative Seminar.  We made use of a GPS navigation system and
without getting lost at all; it took almost six hours to arrive at our
destination.  Why is that you ask?  Because as wonderful as GPS technology
is, the systems seem to have a mind of their own.  This particular version,
named Dana, decided we were not to traverse any major highways.  We saw
every little town between Stroudsburg and Arlington VA, including but not
limited to Verginsville PA.

Ok, so we arrived at around 5:00 p.m. and met up with the rest of the
Pennsylvania Contingency and had a pleasant supper at a restaurant serving
Afghanistan Ian food.

This morning we all attended the morning and final session of the
president’s meeting where a very interesting discussion ensued regarding
facilitating productive membership and board beetings, so, beware, I’m
going to practice some of what I learned.

The 2009 Legislative Seminar commenced at 2:00 p.m.  Mitch Pomerantz
outlined the issues for the attendees and we all introduced ourselves.
There were states well represented like Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida
and others not represented at all, like New Jersey and Oklahoma.  We next
heard from Eric Bridges, Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs for
ACB who is a good speaker and has lots of personality.  Eric brought us up
to speed on the current state of various pieces of legislation.  Most of
these details can be found in my last posting entitled “Legislative
Update.”  One very upbeat bit of news is that sometime next month; the
department of Treasury will be called upon to present its ideas regarding
how to make paper currency accessible to persons who are blind or visually
impaired.

Next on our agenda was a discussion on the ADA Amendment Act.  This
discussion was lead by Eve Hill, Senior Vice President of the Burton Blatt
Institute.  In a nutshell, the ADA Amendment Act provided that the Supreme
Court must return to the intended definition of disabled.  This will result
in each case being decided on discrimination rather than whether or not the
person bringing suit could be pigeon holed into a too narrow
classification.  In addition, persons with kidney failure, diabetes, cancer
and other ailments involving bodily functions will now be protected by the
ADA.

The afternoon’s discussion ended with an in-depth discourse regarding the
impact of our failing economy on transit systems, most especially the para
transit systems.  While the federal government will not suffer a decrease
in funding for transportation, and transportation means highway repair,
bridge construction, road maintenance and a whole host of other areas of
consideration, most of the money available in the federal budget will be
earmarked for capitol expenses which include the purchase of new vehicles,
maintaining shelters, building facilities to house vehicles and the like.
The budget has very limited funds for the operation of transit systems;
these would include hiring of drivers, fuel, benefits packages for drivers
and other such considerations.  As was discussed at a recent MCCB meeting,
this is much the same scenario as was described and is being predicted at
the local level.  You might ask if there is any good news here.  Well there
is!  Within the stimulus package, new money has been set aside for capitol
improvements for pedestrian safety.  Can you guess how this will benefit
the blind community?  Well, the answer is that it might prove to be
somewhat easier to find funds for Accessible pedestrian signals. 

So, MCCB and friends of MCCB, let’s make the best of our options and
resources in these difficult economic times and get to work on convincing
our local municipalities to install more APS devices.

- Mary Ann Alexander

Filed under: ACB Seminar, Accessible Currency, Advocacy, Affiliate Organizations, Quiet Cars, Telecommunications, Transportation