Participants: Vicki Shipley, Patrick Smithand Tami Sato

WASFAA Federal Relations CommitteeConference Call – July 13, 2017

Participants: Vicki Shipley, Patrick Smithand Tami Sato.

Meeting started at 2:03p.m.

Welcome, FRC Members, Review of 5/25 Minutes

This must be a busy time and Tami considered cancelling this meeting but wanted to get a start on a response to the Department for identification of burdensome regulations.
There were no To Dos from the previous meeting but Tami did write a short article for the newsletter on highlights of the President’s budget for FY 18.

This and That at the NASFAA Conference

Jeff Baker provided a federal update but there were no federal breakout sessions or the “Ask the Feds” set up. This is Jeff’s last NASFAA appearance since he is retiring. His replacement has not been named.
Big topics included year round Pell which was clarified as probably not being used by students until 2018.
Folks were worried about PSLF which may end, but students in the plan already, will be grandfathered.
Borrower defense and GE will be renegotiated later this year.
Pell schedules are out, earlier than last year in response to the earlier FAFSA
DE and attendees disagreed on how much it will affect the office workload when parents and students will be unable to see data on the SAR placed there from the IRS DRT. This is a security measure that will apply for the 2018-2019 processing year.
Perkins return is still very unlikely. Schools need to decide whether to liquidate and lose the institutional share or to return funds with the excess cash process and continue to pay for the servicing of these loans, but take back the institutional share.
Most did not think it would be a good idea for the Federal loan repayment to be turned over to the US Treasury. They do know how to collect money, but they do not know the complex repayment options and regulations involved in student loan repayment. There are 9 contracted servicers presently.

Evaluation of Existing Regulations

In response to the Presidential Executive Order 13777 to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens, the Department is asking for identification of regulations that are outdated, unnecessary or ineffective, impose costs that exceed benefits or creates serious inconsistencies. WASFAA president, Helen has suggested we submit a regional response. Comments can be submitted at regulations.gov until August 21.
Vicki mentioned that we should not be considering issues that are statutory. DE cannot change the law. What they can change is their interpretation and implementation of the law. A good example is the cash management rules. Other areas discussed were IBR, preferred lender list regulations for private loans and Senator Alexanders four criteria.
Tami will try to draft a letter for FRC to review. Vicki said NCHER has a draft chart developed and Tami asked if she could share this for format use in a WASFAA response. To Do: Vicki will forward the NCHER document. (Update: Tami drafted a document with some of the issues we might want to address using an older FRC comment. Shannon was able to format the issues into a chart and the letter was updated to reflect the charts main topics. Both were sent for WASFAA council review and the time to do so was extended since the DE extended the deadline date by 30 days.)

Newsletter article due July 20th

Tami will be on vacation so she asked for a volunteer for the next newsletter article. Included in the FRC meeting handout was an article from the WSJ called “I owe that much?” which covered the LEAD act and some efforts by some states to inform students annually about their total debt and expected monthly payments. Patrick had mentioned that his state of Washington had passed legislation that will require this information and more, starting 2018-2019.
To Do: Patrick will write an article regarding his and other states recent actions to better inform students on their loans. This can be sent to

Summary/Other Discussions