WASFAA Federal Relations Committee Conference Call December 16, 2015, 2:00 PT

WASFAA Federal Relations Committee Conference Call – December 16, 2015, 2:00 PT

Participants: Anafe Robinson, Helen Faith, Vicki Shipley and Tami Sato

Meeting started at 2:05 p.m.

Welcome, Review of 11/18 Minutes, To Do’s

Tami stated that the new CASFAA VP for Federal Issues, Rachel Feldman will be joining our calls in the future.
Regarding to dos, a listserv message was sent to members with a summary of final regulations on Cash Management (with matrix) and REPAYE. Vicki sent the link to the hearing on FSA performance. Re hill visits, Tami sent a message to the state presidents on our need to know who would be interested in attending a meeting with staffers during the hill visit time slot. Vicki has started discussion with staffers. (Update: Vicki has secured two meetings, one at 9:00 am with Kathleen Smith of the HELP Committee and one at 10:30 with Jenny Prescott of the House Education Committee. Yeah!) We will discuss topics for issues document and conference session ideas during this meeting.

This and That

FSA Conference – The Med-L listserv had people attending send notes and screen shots for those who were unable to attend and Tami wrote up the notes received. Seems like PPY was a hot topic. There is concern that systems would not be ready for the change. Students might expect earlier award notices due to the October FAFSA availability but packaging will be difficult since Pell tables won’t be released any earlier.

There was a session on the DCAS system that will allow institutions to challenge self- reported data and DE calculated metrics. There is concern that the time between when the completers list is released and institutions have to respond is too short. Anafe thought that they were moving or retiring the current appeals system.

WASFAA Newsletter - The newsletter deadline for articles is Friday and we talked about submitting an article about the FSA conference. Most of us will be going on holiday break so there might not be time to submit an article for this issue.
Hearing on FSA as a PBO – Justin testified with input from board members and spoke about GE implementation difficulties, enrollment reporting challenges, servicer issues and the unacceptable FSA response time to institutions. Runcie tried to defend the FSA but it was obvious why a GAO review put the FSA on a high risk list. Improvements are way overdue.
FY 16 Budget – At the time of the meeting a CR of a few days was passed so that a bipartisan omnibus budget bill could be passed before Congress went on recess.

Leadership Conference

Meeting with staffers – See above for meetings set up for February 24th. The conference hotel is near the DCA airport so travel to the hill will have to be arranged and time allotted. BTW, many thanks to Vicki for making the connection and setting up meetings. To Do: Tami/Beryl will connect with state presidents or members to start an attendee list.
Issues Document – We discussed using some of the issues in the list NASFAA provided on the biggest financial aid news of 2015. PPY is obviously an area of concern. The long-term fate of Perkins is also something we would want to input on as it will be a consideration for RHEA. Fixing the mess of repayment options is something that can be done by Congress. Vicki provided the NCHER latest comparison of IDR plans and it is ridiculously complicated. DE can only add options, not reduce them. We need to input on what we would like to see as repayment options for borrowers: REPAYE only, one based on number of years and one based on income, standard and extended, etc. Someone suggested more flexible loan limits and more flexibility for counseling above exit and entrance. The annual is not enough for some student populations. Additional counseling cannot be mandated. We need to determine what our priorities are. We can look at the issues document that we utilized last year and decide if we want to advocate for issues that have not been changed. To do: Tami asked FRC members who have direct experience on any of these issues to write up a paragraph that we can include in a draft for our next meeting. We will have to get EC approval of the document before use.
List of Participants – We estimate that there would be from 10-15 participants. We will need list by mid-January that would include name, organization and email address. List has Tami and Mike Johnson on it so far.
WASFAA FRC Conference Session – Mike Johnson, President-Elect has asked if FRC could do more to show members how to be advocates. FRC has been active in sending letters and comments out this year but it would be nice for members to also be active. To Do: FRC members will check PPT’s on past sessions they have provided on this topic. Deadline for session proposal is 2/1.

Summary

Other discussion – We talked about how the budget solution of an omnibus package has been used in the past few years. It is not favorable since all the separate spending bills are rolled into one.
The next FRC meeting is scheduled for 1/27/2016 at 2:00 pm.