Thursday, 29 September 2016 - 2:59pm

29 September 2016

We received an update this morning from Carol Graves Holladay, attorney for our Public Policy Consortium.  I have provided the essential details of Carol's report below and want to express our appreciation for Carol's continued work on this issue in behalf of the Consortium. 

While Congress (the House) was moving through their last bit of legislation late into last night – H.R. 6094 did pass, with a vote a 246-177, strictly along party lines.  This is for the six month delay in implementation, but not abolishing the new regulations. 

H.R. 6094 will now move on to the Senate, however, there are several things that will have to happen before it moves further and these mostly depend on the election in November. 

  1. Congress is not returning for its lame duck session until the week after the election, as the CR runs until Dec. 9, they will have to get the budget for FY17 resolved before that date or begun the entire process again. 
  2. If the Senate flips to Democrat controlled, they may try to move the bill forward in the Senate, but it will not likely be signed by the President, thus missing the timeline to delay from December 1 implementation date.
  3. If the Senate remains the same – there is a chance they will try to push it forward, but it will probably not be signed by the President and they will not be able to override his veto on this vote since it is a party line vote.

There could still be discussions about additional or different legislation giving the implementation date a grace period, working in that six month delay even after the December implementation date, if the House, Senate and Administration are all Republican.

Again, the focus is the implementation deadline and not repeal.  The majority of associations and campus senior administrators appear to support the delay so they can better respond to the changes.

We understand the complexity and challenges and respect our colleagues and their legitimate concerns.  We want to avoid any impression that this is an "us vs. them" situation. We have provided guidance documents and webinars to assist in implementation and we recognize that our offerings are insufficient for the enormity of the task. 

At the same time, our members have, in majority, identified the new regulations as a substantive relief to long standing economic injustices inherent in traditional compensation strategies for student affairs and particularly newer professionals. Even though it may seem like a minor concession to delay implementation, it is never minor to the person's experiencing the injustice.  For this reason and with respect to the majority of members providing input, we remain committed to implementation of the regulations on December 1. 

At this point, the proposed letter from the Consortium has been put on hold.

Please continue to send me your input because this issue will come back up in the next two months. 

Thank you for your great response regarding ACPA's decision to not sign the letter that was proposed. 

Best,

Cindi