NYSACRA

The U.S. Senate and House began their August recess, members of both chambers will return after Labor Day to start the mop-up phase of the 109th Congress.  But they are unlikely to make much headway before breaking off Sept. 29 to devote their full time and attention to campaigning for the Nov. 7^TH Election.  None of the fiscal 2007 funding bills has made it to President Bush’s desk so far.  The House has passed all but one of its 11 bills, holding back the contentious Labor-HHS- Education measure.  But the Senate has passed only one of its 12 measures, for Homeland Security.  This is a good time to reach your Congressional Reps at home, make an appointment to visit them in their District Office or invite them out to tour your homes and programs.

The Board of Regents approved the “emergency” adoption of new State Education Department (SED) regs, effective June 23, 2006.  These regulations: Establish general standards for behavioral interventions, including assessments of student behavior, behavioral intervention plans, the use of time out rooms and emergency physical interventions; set a general prohibition on the use of aversive behavioral interventions, with a provision and procedures for a child-specific exception to this prohibition; and establish standards for programs that provide aversive behavioral interventions as approved on a child- specific basis.  A press conference will be held on Monday August 14^th at 12:30 p.m., just prior to the NYC Hearing, by a broad coalition of NY legislators and community organizations to protest these "emergency" regulations enacted by SED.  Contact Carmen Santana at 718-456- 7726 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .  Hearings will be held next week: New York City: Monday, August 14, 2006, 2:00 pm – 7:00 pm, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, 163 West 125th Street, 2^nd Floor Art Gallery, NY, NY 10027; in Syracuse: Tuesday, August 15, 2006, 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm, Dr. King Elementary School, 416 E. Raynor Avenue, Syracuse, New York 13202, see online version of this News & Views or Click Here for more info.

Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson called for overhauling Medicaid by shifting responsibility for long-term care of the growing elderly population to the federal government, while leaving states to focus on acute care for those under 65, particularly children.  "The federal government is the only one large enough to handle this growing problem," said Thompson. "The states are going broke right now under the Medicaid system.  Thompson said that his proposals would probably increase spending initially because of start-up costs but that overall spending would be likely to decrease over time as officials learned to operate more efficiently.  See link to the proposal on our website, www.nysacra.org or Click Here for a PDF copy.

In an unusual move, the Governor has been requesting almost 300 bills at one time every two weeks, whereas the old custom was about 20-40 per week.  At the new rate, he will have acted on all bills passed both houses before the end of August; we are not sure what the rush is.  So far he has vetoed 284 bills, of which the following two are of interest to NYSACRA Members: S. 8354, relating to the burden of proof for appeal procedures for children in special education hearings; and S5114A, authorizing the inclusion of a surplus factor in the determination of tuition for special education and special act school districts.  There is still hope S. 8354 can become law through a veto override.  See www.nysacra.org/nysacra/leg/topbills.htm for a list of bills.