Transcript of “Rights Here, Rights Now – Episode 11: “Post-General Assembly with Colleen Miller Part 2”

Produced by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia.                                                            

[NARRATOR]: The information provided on this podcast does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. Instead, all information, content and materials available are for general informational purposes only.

[Intro Music: Light rhythmic percussion beats, finger snaps & hand claps]

Welcome to Rights Here, Rights Now, the podcast about disability, advocacy, and activism.

[VIRGINIA]: I'm your Advocate host Virginia Pharis.

[REN]: I'm your Advocate host, Ren Faszewski.

[VIRGINIA]: Every two weeks we dig into relevant issues, current events, and different avenues for self-advocacy.

[REN]: ‘Cause someone has to.

[VIRGINIA]: And it might as well be us!

[REN]: This podcast is produced by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia, the Commonwealth’s Protection and Advocacy agency for disability rights. Find out more at www.dLCV.org.

[VIRGINIA]: Ren!

[REN]: Yes.

[VIRGINIA]: Are you ready?

[REN]: I’m very ready.

[VIRGINIA]: For part 2.

[REN]: Electric Boogaloo.

[VIRGINIA]: Yes, of the general assembly part 2. [Episode]

[VIRGINIA]: Electric Boogaloo- exactly the words that were about to come out of my mouth.

[REN]: Yes we will. I believe have Ms. Colleen Miller back in our office!

[VIRGINIA]: Yes and she's going to talk about some of the things that we still need to work on. 

[REN]: Yes, because even though we had a really great run this year at the General Assembly, ...... just not everything that we had hoped, passed….[pause] and this is about the things that we are going to be advocating for and trying to make progress on in future.

Before we jump in let's check out disability in the news!

[MOLLY]: Hello I’m Molly Carter, I’m the current receptionist and administrative assistant for dLCV. A new documentary was recently released on Netflix. Crip Camp is a film produced by former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle. And centers on the origins of the disability rights movement. The documentary features footage from Camp Jened, a summer camp for people with disabilities. Those who attended the camp in the 1970’s were instrumental in the protests that led to the passage of the American’s with Disabilities Act. The director of the film, Jim LeBrecht, said “I think our film is a film that many in the disabled community have been waiting for.” Obama said, “Crip Camp is both a gripping look at the history of the disability rights movement and a timely call to action urging us to explore our own duty to fight for dignity of all people.” Crip Camp is available on Netflix now. We hope you are able to check it out soon!

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[VIRGINIA]: Okay, so today we are welcoming back to our podcast studio Ms. Colleen Miller, your boss and mine…(Laughter)... really just mine! – But also Ren’s! And, also, our Executive director of The Disability Law Center of Virginia. She’s here to talk to us about...The General Assembly and the things that we are still working on. Still advocating for. 

**Enter, Colleen Miller: **

[COLLEEN]: That’s right. Even though this session did end on March 12th, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Legislatively. 

[VIRGINIA]: Wait, you mean we didn’t solve everything?!? [Incredulous laughter]

[COLLEEN]: We did not solve everything for people with disabilities. Not all of the problems have been solved but, we do have another chance, we have another chance! Another’s coming up- all too soon- in January of 2021.

[VIRGINIA]: So soon, yet so far.

[COLLEEN]: Yes, indeed. 

[VIRGINIA]: So, Colleen, I have a question. 

[COLLEEN]: Yes, Virginia. What can I tell you?

[VIRGINIA]: So, I watched a lot of Schoolhouse Rock [laughter] and they never really explain to me what happens when a bill doesn't become a law?

[COLLEEN]: [Laughs] Yeah, that's a jingle we can start to work on. [HAHAHA] Maybe you can sing it at the next episode. “I’m just

[COLLEEN]: So, in the last time that weis considered about four thousand different pieces of proposed bills and resolutions and that's not even going to cover the things that they handled in the budget. ...

You know, there's a lot of things in the budget that are very, very important to people with disabilities, but of the 4,000 bills and resolutions that they considered, there were about 400 that they...treated as “continued.”

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Huh.

[COLLEEN]: And that means that the bill is not officially “dead.”

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Hmmm

[COLLEEN]: But, the committee has to take some action on it between now and December, in order for it to remain alive.  Most of the communities don't meet between now and December, so effectively a bill that's continued to 2021, it’s pretty hard to keep it alive… [unfortunately]. It’ll probably be dead.

[Continued on…]: Bit a lot of issues that we were very, interested in got continued until 2021.  Other ways that a bill can die- is that it can just fail to come to the committee at all. 

[Pause.]

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Hmmm.

[COLLEEN]: And there were several bills that we were really interested in that didn't even come to the committee. One of them concerned eliminating the death penalty for people with serious mental illness; and that's a bill that is introduced every year. And, this year the committee did not [didn't] even hear it at all. So it died that way. Another way that a bill can die is if the committee votes to do what's called pass it by indefinitely and that is a kind of a harsh way to treat a bill that they don't like but some bills meet that fate.

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Hmmm.

[COLLEEN]: And then another way a bill can die is if they “table it” and tabling is just really a more gentle way of killing a bill...that they frequently say gently lay it on the table and that's just to see if legislators one that is really well respected, or it's a bill that has got a lot of political appeal to it, they may decide to table it, rather than to kill it.

[VIRGINIA]: So, to use an analogy for the Millennials they “ghosted” the bill.

[COLLEEN]: [LOL]: I wish I knew what that meant, but I'm sure that analogy works!

[REN]: It works!

[REN]: So, I know last time we talked about some of the bills that we were really excited about, seeing what passed- and-and then what we can look forward to, and we talked about some of these bills specifically. Like “Guardianship” and some of the progress was made there.

And I mentioned supported decision-making and you made a face, [HAHAHA- laughter] so I am assuming that it did not go great! For supportive decision making?

[COLLEEN]: You know, it did not go very well. [Sigh] Last year, the joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, took a look at “Supported Decision-Making,” and made proposals to the legislature to adopt Supported Decision Making.

[Continued]: And the State Bar came out, just in strong opposition to it, although, they hadn't participated in the legislative study in a meaningful way. And once the proposal was made to the legislature they opposed it. But, Supported Decision-Making is absolutely something that we as advocates for people with disabilities support, and hope that the legislature, will take under advisement, soon. And they have continued that bill until 2021.

[Continued]: So we do hope that there will be an opportunity to advocate for that next year.

[Pause.]

[COLLEEN]: “Supported Decision-Making” as you know, is the way everybody makes decisions. That's/It’s the way I make decisions...whenever I have something to think about that is beyond anything that I've had experience with or outside my expertise. You know- I turn to my friends how to make decisions in that area. I’ve got, you know, my friend Google to do research on it. “SDM” just [established] makes connections so that people with disabilities have to help them make decisions that are outside their [area of] expertise.

[VIRGINIA]: I think that listeners should keep their ears to the ground for an upcoming episode on “SDM”-

[COLLEEN]: That would be wonderful.

[VIRGINIA]: And other alternatives to guardianship, that’ll be coming in the next couple of months.

[COLLEEN]: That would be wonderful!  Another issue on, on guardianship that did not get off the ground has to do with protecting individuals rights to have visitors of their choice. And, this is a this is bill that delegate Levine has offered to the legislature year after year after year, and this past year, he work really hard to bring all of the different interest groups to table invited to State Bar to talk about it, felt like he had a good resolution for it, and again, at the last minute the State Bar came out in opposition to the bill. The committee that was sharing the bill offered to continue it to 2021 and delegate Lavigne argued against that, saying that he did not feel like he was ever going to get agreement from the State Bar on the issues, and so the committee passed by and definitely took the harsher stand on it and just defeated the bill. So, that was kind of disappointing.

[VIRGINIA]: Now, I do feel the need to point out that if any of our listeners are under Guardianship and they feel that they're being abused neglected or exploited by Guardian they absolutely have the right to call The Adult Protective Services hotline we will put the link to that number below.

[COLLEEN]: And there *ARE* great resources on our website about supported decision-making and about guardianship! So that's a good place to start... if somebody has some questions about it.

[REN]: We also talked last time, in the last episode, about great strides that have been made in school settings...

[COLLEEN]: The children disabilities in our schools.

[REN]: Yes, so... perhaps maybe there's some areas that didn't go so great?

[COLLEEN]: Yeah. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done in that area. One of the issues with schools that the legislature looked at and did not take action on has to do with kids with disabilities and [resident] placements and they considered some funding initiatives to allow for FAPT funding. Let me see if I can remember what that stands for...

[VIRGINIA]: I’m also gonna need you to define “private placement!”

[COLLEEN]: So to find private placements for kids with disabilities, particularly, we see specialized schools for kids with autism. And in an ideal world we would be able to educate them with their peers in a public school. But, because public schools are really kind of lacking in the resources to deal with the more complicated disabilities associated with autism, in particular, those kids are frequently segregated into “private placement.” Sometimes residential. Sometimes they are “day placements.” But, you know, they are segregated, typically, from developing students.

And the legislature did consider a pilot program to transition students from private placement into public schools, and considered some funding alternatives to enable that to happen.

And none of those bills passed so that would be something that we look forward to following in the next year.

[COLLEEN]: And hopefully supporting that if we can!

[REN]: Yeah, I know that...it’s our mindset at DLCV that integration is always the goal. And what we want is to see people with disabilities integrated into their communities as full members of that community. So you know instead of funding private placements, maybe funding the public school to be able to better support students with disabilities?

[COLLEEN]: That’s right!

[COLLEEN]: So, we did in fact talk about funding from a program called- The Family Assessment and Planning Team. And it's a state generally funded, FAPT/ Now, typically those funds are used to enable somebody to move it into private placement. So [instead] the legislation, considered to allow people to use it for me to move out of private placement.

[VIRGINIA]: So just to give our listeners a little hope- these are proposals that aren't totally off the table they’re just not coming to us this year??

[COLLEEN]: Yes, that’s right they were made this year and the legislation took the action. They called [for it to be] continued it until 2021. And then one of the places we're continuing legislation might actually be effective- It [this] has to do with mental health issues in particular.

There is a legislative group that meets all year long, that sometimes referred to as the “Deeds Commission” or SJ 47.

It was created by a joint resolution in 2014, to study mental health needs in the 21st century. And there were several bills that were brought to legislate to this year that anyone with a letter – with a letter to the Deeds commission so the bills will remain alive until 2021 because there is an actual legislative group that will be meeting during that time to consider them.

[VIRGINIA]: Well speaking a little bit of the deeds commission I think that there was some stuff up in the legislature regarding the hospital bed registry?

[COLLEEN]: That's right! This was created in 2014 in response to a crisis involving a legislator’s son. And what the bed registry is supposed to be is supposed to be a real time listing of all private beds that are available to meet psychiatric needs- to meet temporary detention needs or, commitment needs, for people with mental illness. it does not work very well.

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Hmmm.

[COLLEEN]: It's not well maintained. Private hospitals are supposed to updated every 24 hours. And frankly, once they updated it, it becomes outdated within half an hour So, there was some legislation here to change some of the requirements around that it’ll eventually got modified to be a study. To study the psychiatric bed registry and find out what could be done to improve it. And I suspect that study will be done either by the Department of Behavioral Health or will be done by the Deeds commission, to see if there are improvements can be made in it. 

It  was- it was in 2013, or 2014 as a way of the legislature feeling like they had done something, but I think hospitals at that time and told the legislature this is not going to work it is not going to accomplish what you think it's going to accomplish.

[VIRGINIA]: Yeah, and sort of tangential to that: what about mandatory Outpatient Treatment?

[COLLEEN]: Yes, that is another issue this year that will be studied by the Deeds Commission. There is a work group that has been looking at the issue. The biggest problem with that work group in recent years has been that there has not been one single solitary consumer of mental health services that has been included in that and the workgroup also did not include any advocates for people with disabilities who have people with mental illness. [WHAT? Crazy!]

[REN]: It seems like an oversight to me. 

[VIRGINIA]: Hmmmm...what?

[COLLEEN]: Yeah, the administrators of that work group claimed that it was just an error, that it was not intentional mistake, but I think also that some people out there don't really understand the difference between a consumer of mental health services and a family member of a consumer. 

[REN]: They are very different!

They are very different- very different needs- in this work group was loaded with family members but did not have any actual consumers on the group so that's one of the objections that we raised our number groups raised us bills were being considered about mandatory Outpatient Treatment the the three bills that were for bills that were being considered we're all continued to 2021 they referred to the Deeds commission for study and the Deeds commission has this work group has committed to involving consumers and consumer Advocates so hopefully any kind of legislation that comes next year will at least be better informed with consumer rights.

[REN]: I know and against kind of talked about last time I talked I brought up the minimum wage and one of the great things that happened was they remove some pretty ickey language.

[COLLEEN]: That's right!

[REN]: But perhaps other things need to be one of the issues we struggle with advancing disability rights has to do with these employers that are sometimes called sheltered workshops and sheltered workshops are permitted under Department of Labor, under the Federal Department of Labor, [there are] regulations to pay people disabilities less than minimum wage.

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Hmmm.

[COLLEEN]: Often, people with disabilities are paid on a productivity scale there's no other group that is paid based on productivity. And as I like to tell people there are days in my job that if I'm paid based on productivity I'm working for free today! Because I'm just not very productive and then there are days when you I am so productive that you couldn’t afford me, so nobody gets paid based on productivity.

[REN]: I can tell you, Colleen, I’m productive every day. Don’t you worry! [LOL!]

[COLLEEN]: I am confident that you are!

[REN]: But, yeah, I imagine that of this whole being paid less than minimum wage, DLCV’s not a fan!

[COLLEEN]: Yes. It is a complicated issue; It is not as advanced for some people whose ability to work is not as advanced as others. There are some people, who, if not for incentive/sheltered workshops- they would not be hired. There are people who make minimum wage who could do the job better. That in some cases would be a “better decision” for an employer to make. So it is a complicated issue. But, we are confident that, sheltered workshops are going to be a thing of the past. In the same way that training centers, in Virginia, are going to be a thing of the past. Some do Transition to competitive employment and they will be leading the way in Virginia so that is something that will change.

[REN]: Is there anything else that our listeners should be aware of??

Choir movie theaters to offer a certain number of movies with captioning it was a bill to operate with closed captioning which many in the deaf Community do not favor. As it's very difficult to have a consumer to have to be holding a separate device that would have some captioning on it and that bill for closed captioning was withdrawn by the patron almost as soon as it was published.

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: Mhhmmm

And then. there were two bills to require open captioning and those the theater the movie industry is not especially in favor of open captioning because they feel like it can distract from the “artistic value of the movie” [WHAT? Cray!!]

[COLLEEN]: Several years ago we required a local theater to offer captioning for one of the Harry Potter movies that was out. And I want to see that, and if it had not been for the captioning, I would have had no idea what was going on. 

[VIRGINIA]: WE CAN’T possibly speak and understand British accents! Don't ask that of us!

[COLLEEN]: Hahaha. The legislation was continued to 2021 with the promise that the theater the movie industry is going to be conducting a study on the viability of open captioning movies. And so, the prospect is that the study will be done sometime this summer and the legislature can act based on that study we don't have high hopes for the study because it's been conducted by the industry and we already know the industry is not really in favor of it but that is one of the things we look forward to working on that so in terms of these areas and issue is that haven't made quite the progress in the legislature that we would want them to are there things that we can do that constituents can do people disabilities can do to lend their voice to advocate for these things learn more about it so for example we are really hopeful that we can get some legislation regarding supported decision-making going forward so listeners out there can go on to our website to are supported decision-making page and learn what we're talking about the support of decision-making we promised a legislative committee that we would produce some materials for them on sport decision-making explaining what other states have done and when we do that we will make that available on our website and that would also give their our listeners some things to do to help the word it take to learn more about it.

[COLLEEN]: They can learn how other states have handled it and when any kind of issue like this comes up that you care about you should make a personal connection with your own Senator or your own delegate you can go onto legislative services website and we'll have a link on our on our notes page about this you can go there and type in who is my legislator if you don't know and you will get there official government email address mailing address and way to contact them to just say that you're interested in this issue or you support this issue you can also work with your local pure run organizations particularly groups like - VOCAL is a great pure run Organization for people with mental health issues- THE ARC is great for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Be sure to make those kinds of connections and find out how they are approaching these issues and support them in that end in track our Facebook page track dLCV Legislative Highlights and continue to learn more about these issues and become advocates.

[REN]: Well thank you again so much for joining us. This has been again the first two-parter for the Rights HERE, Rights Now podcast so you should feel so blessed.

[COLLEEN]: I am! how lucky are out so thank you again for educating I'm happy to be here and thanks for doing this podcast.

[VIRGINIA]: And now for dLCV highlight.

Did you know Social Security benefits can change when you turn 18? That was the subject of social security disability clinic consultation provided by dLCV’s Social Security expert, Elizabeth Horn.  And, it was conducted in-person using the ZOOM video platform so the family didn’t need to leave the comfort of their home in Southwest Virginia! This young man now knows what to apply for and how to use the benefits as he pursues college and beyond! More clinics to come this Spring… Check our home page for an announcement and to register at www.dlcv.org.

[REN]: Well again, thank you to our esteemed fearless leader for coming down and chatting with us about legislative stuff.

[VIRGINIA]: There is still work to be done legislatively so be sure to check out our website for all the comprehensive legislative highlight information and follow us on social media because we post a lot of updates and opportunities for activism there.

[REN]: Definitely check us out. We always post the legislative highlights and bill numbers. Go ahead and give us a follow.

[VIRGINIA]: Thank you for listening to this episode of Rights Here, Rights Now a podcast by the disAbility Law Center of Virginia. We are available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review!

[REN]: If you need assistance or more information about a topic, say the General Assembly visit us online at www.dlcv.org.

[VIRGINIA]: Follow us on Twitter @disAbilityLawVA

[REN]: Until next time, I’m Ren Faszewski.

[VIRGINIA]: And I’m Virginia Pharris.

[VIRGINIA AND REN]: And this has been, Rights Here, Rights Now!