Parity Archive

Outreach

ARRL Board Withdraws FCC Rule Making Petition for Parity Act Provisions

At its annual meeting January 18–19, the ARRL Board of Directors decided that the organization needs to “review, re-examine, and reappraise ARRL’s regulatory and legislative policy with regard to private land use restrictions.”

In order to effectively undertake such a review, the Board adopted a resolution to withdraw its December 18 Petition for Rule Making to the FCC, which sought to amend the Part 97 Amateur Service rules to incorporate the provisions of the Amateur Radio Parity Act (ARPA), without prejudice to refiling. The resolution also is asking members of Congress who had refiled legislation to enact the Amateur Radio Parity Act (ARPA) to refrain from seeking to advance that legislation pending further input from the ARRL.1

  1. “ARRL Board of Directors Issues Statement on Amateur Radio Parity Act”, ATTL The national association for Amateur Radio, retrieved January 24 2019, http://www.arrl.org/news/view/arrl-board-of-directors-issues-statement-on-amateur-radio-parity-act. ↩︎

Outreach

Amateur Radio Parity Act Passes House, Heads To Senate

Just 10 days after being introduced, the 2017 Amateur Radio Parity Act legislation, H.R. 555, passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week on unanimous consent under a suspension of House rules.

The bill’s language is identical to that of the 2015 measure, H.R. 1301, which won House approval late last summer after attracting 126 co-sponsors, but failed to clear the U.S. Senate last fall as the 114th Congress wound down. The new bill, again sponsored by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), was introduced on January 13 with initial co-sponsorship by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) and Rep. Greg Walden, W7EQI (R-OR), who chairs the influential House Committee on Energy and Commerce. [ 1 ]

A complete list of all actions on H.R. 555 along with full text of this bill are available on congress.gov.

Footnotes

[ 1 ] “Amateur Radio Parity Act Speeds to U.S. House Passage, Heads to U.S. Senate”, ARRL The national association for Amateur Radio, last modified January 24 2017, http://www.arrl.org/news/amateur-radio-parity-act-speeds-to-u-s-house-passage-heads-to-u-s-senate.

Outreach

Press for US Senate Passage of Amateur Radio Parity Act

ARRL once again is calling on its members to urge their US Senators to support the Amateur Radio Parity Act (H.R. 1301) when it comes up in the Senate during the “lame duck” session of Congress that adjourns in mid-December. The House of Representatives approved the bill in September, but if the Senate does not follow suit, the bill will die, and the entire process will have to be repeated. ARRL Hudson Division Director Mike Lisenco, N2YBB, who chairs the ARRL Board’s Legislative Advocacy Committee and has been heavily involved in efforts to move H.R. 1301 forward, said today, “The clock is ticking!” [1]

Contacting your US Senators about the Amateur Radio Parity Act is quick and easy:

  1. Go to the Rally Congress page
  2. Click the Send Message button
  3. Fill in your complete contact information on the next page
  4. Click the Save and Preview button near the bottom of the page
  5. Preview the message on the next page
  6. Click the Send Messages button to send the messages to your US Senators

That’s all there is to it!

Footnotes

[1] “ARRL Calls on Members to Press for US Senate Passage of Amateur Radio Parity Act”, ARRL the national association for Amateur Radio, accessed November 15 2016, http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-calls-on-members-to-press-for-us-senate-passage-of-amateur-radio-parity-act.

Outreach

Contact Your Senator About The Amateur Radio Parity Act

“The bill is passed without objection.” With those words, Amateur Radio history was made on September 12, when the US House of Representatives approved the Amateur Radio Parity Act, H.R. 1301 on a voice vote under a suspension of the rules. The focus of the campaign to enact the legislation into law now shifts to the US Senate.
(ARRL: Amateur Radio Parity Act Passes in the US House of Representatives!)

As ARRL Dakota Division Director, Kent Olson KA0LDG, wrote in his Tuesday, September 13, 2016, email to Dakota Division Members:

This is a “call to arms” and crunch time for us to get this bill through the Senate. The days of the 114th Congress are getting less and less each day so the faster this bill gets to the floor, the better.

Please, please, please, take a few minutes and do this for the future of Amateur Radio. ARRL officers, directors, and staff have put countless hours into getting HR-1301 passed and yet the work is not quite done. Now we need another push for [HR-1303 in the Senate] to get passed and you can help.

To this end the ARRL have deployed a Rally Congress page to simplify the letter writing process. And Rick Roderick (K5UR, ARRL President) sent the following letter to the ARRL Membership requesting their support:

Dear ARRL member,

I am writing to you today because we are at a crossroad in our efforts to obtain passage of The Amateur Radio Parity Act.

Our legislative efforts scored a major victory in our campaign when The Amateur Radio Parity Act, H.R. 1301, passed in the House of Representatives yesterday, September 12th. The legislation now moves to the Senate, where we need every Senator to approve the bill.

You are one of over 730,000 licensed Amateur Radio Operators living in the United States. Many of you already live in deed-restricted communities, and that number grows daily.

[NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL HAMS TO GET INVOLVED IN THE PROCESS!](https://arrl.rallycongress.net/ctas/urge-senate-to-support-am ateur-radio-parity-act)

Help us in the effort. Please go to the [[ARRL Rally Congress page](https://arrl.rallycongress.net/ctas/urge-senate-to-support-amateu r-radio-parity-act)] and follow the prompts.

Thank you.

73,

Rick Roderick, K5UR
President
ARRL, the national association for Amateur Radio