Legislative Relations
Clark Aldridge, Chair

Pending Legislative Activity

Most of the activity concerning reauthorization is taking place in the US House of Representatives (House). It is expected the US Senate (Senate) will begin to focus on reauthorization after the first of the year and the administration will release it’s version with the President’s budget bill in February.

There have been a number of bills introduced in the House that financial aid professional should follow. These include:

H.R. 2505 introduced by Rep. Delauro (D-CN) would allow out-of-school borrowers to reconsolidate student loans and provide for increased Federal Pell Grant funding.

H.R. 2711 introduced by Rep. Wu (D-OR) is similar to H.R. 2505 and would permit students the freedom to select a student loan consolidator.

H.R. 3080 introduced by Jo Ann Davis (R-VA) would increase the annual amount of student loans that federal agencies can help employees pay back from the current $6,000 per year to $10,000 per year and increase the lifetime maximum repayment amount from $50,000 to $60,000.

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has stated that he will soon introduce his bill that will withhold certain types of federal aid from colleges that increase tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation. Those schools would be required to submit a tuition management plan to the US Department of Education and would have to list their cost-cutting efforts to bring tuition under control.

McKeon told a recent roundtable discussion on the “college cost crisis” that while the bill is not yet finalized it would include an “affordability index” to control cost. It would also include technical changes to streamline federal financial aid regulations, a measure to increase students’ ability to transfer credits from different types of schools and a Web site to help parents and students prepare to pay for college.

Electronic Services
Erik Melis, Chair

SASFAA Web Watch

Did you know that the SASFAA Web site is undergoing a complete facelift? That’s right, the SASFAA Board has contracted with ATAC Corporation to completely redesign the SASFAA Web site appearance and functionality. ATAC Corporation has designed and hosted Web sites for all the regional aid associations and many of the state associations.

What does all this mean for SASFAA members? With the new SASFAA Web site, some of the enhancements/improvements you will notice are:

• A sharper and more uniform appearance that should be very easy to navigate.
• "Members Only" areas through which active/paid members can update membership database information, search the membership directory and vote online during future elections.
• SASFAA listserv subscriptions that can be managed through the Web.
• Vendors/sponsors ability to make sponsorship selections online and place rotating banner ads on the web.
• For each SASFAA conference there will be a conference mini-site which will provide the latest and greatest information about the upcoming conferences.
• A newly formatted SASFAA newsletter online and monthly newsletter updated added in Adobe PDF format.

We are very excited to be working with ATAC to redesign the Web site and look forward to presenting more exciting changes to the SASFAA membership in the near future.

Watch the listserv and Web site for more good things to come!

The SASFAA Board, on behalf of the entire SASFAA membership, extends condolences to Freida Jones, SASFAA Vice President, and her family on the passing of her father, Mr. Rafus Johnson. The funeral for Mr. Johnson was held on October 17 at the Andersonville National Cemetery in Oglethorpe, Georgia.