Electronics Services Committee Report
Erik Melis, Chair

Electronic Voting and the 2006 SASFAA Conference
(Are You Ready?)

As reminder, during the 2006 SASFAA Conference (February 12-15), current SASFAA members will be able to cast their ballot for the 2006-07 election of officers on-line at the conference. SASFAA will have a designated voting area equipped with computers for the voting process. You must have your SASFAA Web Site User ID and Password to cast your ballot.

If you are a current member and you haven’t accessed the SASFAA web site in a while, it would be a good idea to take a few minutes, access the SASFAA web site (www.sasfaa.org), and link to "Member Services". If you do not remember your UserID and/or Password, select "Retrieve Forgotten Password" and complete the information requested. The information will then be emailed to you shortly after you have requested it. Once you receive your User ID and Password, you are encouraged to access "Update Your Member Profile", review the information and make any necessary changes. You may also want to change your password to something easy to remember. You may do this while you are in the "Update Your Member Profile" section or you may simply select the "Change Your Password" option under the "Member Services" page.

Again, please remember that you must have your User ID and Password in order to vote at the conference. Paper ballots will not be available... all voting will be on-line.

If you encounter any problems regarding your User ID/Password, please email support@sasfaa.org.

Legislative Relations Committeee Report
Bill Spiers, Chair

The Legislative Affairs Committee is busy working on behalf of the SASFAA membership. We have had two conference calls, submitted a letter to President Gibbs to send to various legislators on Reauthorization, provided the membership with a template letter so you can write legislators concerning Reauthorization, started sending out our Legislative Digest to the membership and are reviewing the SASFAA Legislative Guide. While the start of the year has kept us busy, we anticipate the pace only getting faster this year.

Reauthorization is elusive at best. By the time you receive this article, we may have a new Reauthorization bill, or it may have been put on the back burner again. There is simply no way to tell what will happen. At the writing of this article, it looks like Congress is ready to act, but we have been down this same road several times over the last few years. One thing we have concluded is that the sooner they act on Reauthorization, the better. The SASFAA Legislative Committee, as you could tell from our model letter, supports prompt action on the bill as it is the opinion of the committee that failure to act could result in reduced funding and eliminated programs.

I hope you are enjoying our Legislative Digest. We realize it is difficult to keep up with all the articles being printed on legislation and financial aid, so we are attempting to provide you with articles we feel are important for you to read. Each member of our committee is responsible for reviewing various publications so we can provide the SASFAA membership with what we feel are the most important articles. Please let us know if this is a beneficial service.

Over the next few months, the Legislative Committee will review, and if needed, revise the SASFAA Legislative Guide found on the SASFAA website. It is our goal to make sure this excellent document remains current. While we don’t anticipate any significant changes, we feel it is our responsibility to ensure you have the best resources possible from SASFAA.

If you have issues or concerns you want the Legislative Committee to address, please do not hesitate to contact me. Our goal is to provide services and information that will benefit the membership.