HB ON THE SCENE: AH&LA Legislative Action Summit Under Way

WASHINGTON, DC— The American Hotel & Lodging Association kicked off its seventh annual Legislative Action Summit (LAS) here at The Washington Court Hotel on Feb. 24, where more than 225 attendees aired their concerns as a prelude to the visit to Capitol Hill to present industry issues directly to members of Congress. It also proved a red-letter day for the association, whose board of directors took the opportunity during a special meeting of members to call for a final vote on 30 recommendations that were set in place to help restructure the organization in the months and years ahead. “The bylaws were approved with amendments,” Joe McInerney, AH&LA president/CEO told HOTEL BUSINESS®, noting the amendments were in place to clarify some of the positions in the bylaws. One amendment management put in outlined what the payment process was; another dealt with having a quorum for a board meeting changed from 33.3% to 51%. Another amendment for weighted membership on the board captured only 42% of the vote and was not approved by the members. “It’s basically intact from what we presented before,” said McInerney, referencing the slate of changes presented during AH&LA’s fall conference in New York last November. Some of the criteria that needs to be fine tuned will go for another vote during a June 9 board meeting and special meeting of the members in Chicago. This November, McInerney said, AH&LA will have a new board that will represent the new bylaws; the rest will take effect Jan. 1, 2005. “We took a giant step [Tuesday]. It’s something that really hadn’t been changed in 94 years,” said McInerney. Later on in the afternoon, McInerney and Jack Connors, evp/public policy for AH&LA, welcomed members to the LAS, where the chief topics of the industry’s focus for the second session of the 108th Congress concern immigration policy reform; Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) reform, notably to address the proliferation of so-called ‘drive-by lawsuits’; and U.S. travel and tourism promotion, specifically centered on the recent passage by the Senate of the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2004, which basically took away $40 million in previously appropriated funding of $50 million for such promotion. The U.S. Department of Commerce subsequently decided to cut the remaining $10 million by 42%. Citing the continued need for partnerships, Connors presented a regulatory affairs panel. Alfonso Martinez-Fonts, special assistant to the Secretary for the Private Sector, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, noted among his division’s major goals is outreach to some of the estimated 25 million businesses in America. “Are you a potential meeting place for terrorists. Are you being used and you don’t even know about it?” he said, suggesting the need for a public/private partnership that is looking at how “to make it more difficult for someone to attack, to use, to misuse” a lodging property. He added the Protective Services Division has put together a four-hour course comprised of basic terrorism awareness for the security-guard level at hotels that’s being offered on a national schedule. Panelist Renee Wohlenhaus, deputy chief of disability rights, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, stated the hotel industry “is in a special place to do more to hire people with disabilities.” She noted her department was in the process of revisiting the federal ADA regulations that were implemented more than a decade ago. In terms of so-called ‘drive-by’ or frivolous lawsuits surrounding ADA compliance, she said “that is something we are concerned about, noting there are plaintiffs who don’t have legitimate complaints. Jim Harte, deputy director, Office of Governmentwide Policy, U.S. General Services Administration, touched on changes within the per diem rate structure. “Now instead of doing a telephone survey, we get reports from Smith Travel Research based on cost data, high-end, low and middle income propert