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The ATA Federal Issues Committee (FIC) shall track telemarketing
related legislation across the United States, and help identify bills that
negatively impact the teleservices industry; gather from the ATA
membership the mission-critical information necessary to impact pending
legislation; and help coordinate the efforts of ATA members to impact
specific bills and proposed regulations
- The ATA has had success over the past
years with the lobbying and advocacy efforts of the State Legislative
Subcommittee and the 19 state coordinators under the direction of Joe
Sanscrainte, Attorney with Bryan Cave LLP.
- While these
efforts have been successful we have hit a bit of a log jam with our
federal legislators. Our
Federal Issues Committee will aid in our efforts to articulate the
strategy to the representatives both at their offices in
Washington
DC
as well as through
visits to member call centers while the representatives are at home. We
are specifically focused on the representatives (20 congressional
representatives and 15 senators) involved with the Energy and Commerce
Committee.
- The back office
work, coordination of schedules, logistics for monthly conference calls
will all be handled through the national office. We’ll coordinate the
activities at national events as well as the web resources for the
committee. The chair will be responsible for coordinating the efforts of
committee members to set meetings with those targeted
representatives.
- At the state
level, resource allocation is determined by the status and severity of
the bills in question. Mitch Roth produces a spreadsheet each week with
a listing and ranking of the bills we are tracking.
- One of the
goals of FIC will be to make the government affairs personnel in our
member companies more effective through the use of ATA leveraged
resources. This will also help to decrease duplicated efforts. The
activity will also create reason for personnel to have access to those
representatives.
- The activity of
the FIC chair will involve the recruitment of existing members to the
committee as well as the recruitment of new members for the ATA. The
activity of FIC will place the Association in a coalition position which
will lead to more members joining.
- The ATA, in
addition to the information available to members through their
subscriptions to the ATA Regulatory Guide, sends out email alerts to all
members based on the activity around certain bills. In accordance with
the information provided on the spreadsheet, when a bill reaches the
orange status, we will set an emergency call with the committee chair to
start the motion among members.
- The
volume of bills to be watched at the federal level is lower than that at
the state level. At the Federal level the ATA is generally involved with
3-4 main issues. In 2004 ATA looked at the following
issues:
- FTC-
all activity around DNC including the fee increase and the 90 day
download requirements
FCC-
preemption of the
New
Jersey
regulations, and the international call
center concerns over privacy, parity, and data
transfer
- In 2005 we
preliminary focused on issues around data privacy, off shoring, FCC
preemption (exclusive jurisdiction) of regulations at the state level
which are more restrictive than those at the federal level.
- FIC will meet
monthly as well as on an as needed basis as bills require more
attention. There will be a representative from the Board of Directors
present on all meetings calls for decisions that will affect ATA
policy.
For more
information about the committee, including how to join, contact Zachary Rice.
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