Transcript:

Chad: Hello

Steven: Hello! Welcome to Oregon Governor’s building in Salem, Oregon. It is a beautiful day except it is raining today. Its great day! My name is Steven M. Brown, I am vice-president of Oregon Association of the Deaf (OAD).

Chad: I’m Chad A. Ludwig and I’m president of Oregon Association of the Deaf. We both are here to share some update on a few things with you today. First update, we met with Senator Sara Gelser and we met to discuss as we asked her to please set up legislative informational hearing about community needs assessment report written and published by Western Oregon University. We asked her about doing this, she is motivated and is up to arrange the legislative informational hearing however she has other pressing priorities that she need to push through legislative session. Sen. Gelser hope to have the information hearing scheduled sometime in March. As soon we learn the date and time, it is important for us community to meet together and observe the hearing.

Steven: Thank you Chad for a great summary. I am here as we both are here to meet with Governor at ten this morning as we met for an hour. We met with Governor’s aide, Debbie, and we sat together to meet and had a very good discussion. The Governor Office seem to be interested in this topic and is fascinated to further the dialog in implementing Oregon State Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is a stand alone and independent entity, it will be operated within the Governor’s Office. We proposed the Commission to offer wide array of services indicated from the community needs assessment written and published by Western Oregon University. The report was distributed on Dec 31, 2016 and this report was shared with Governor Office to help this office to come up with some ideas and collaborate with us in writing a proposed bill. We have sponsors to back this legislative concept, the primary sponsor is Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson and secondary sponsor is Senator Sara Gelser, these two Senators do support this effort. We hope for a support coming from the Governor’s Office as they have not yet taken the position yet they appears to be interested and want to further discuss about this idea. We had a wonderful and lively discussion. I look forward to see how this develops and we will keep you posted through videos in the near future.

Chad: To summary, we have completed two most important meetings and our work isn’t done. I would like for Steven to discuss briefly about the legislative awareness day as it will take place very soon.

Steven: On February 24th, we will begin at 10am actually you could be here by 9am then we will begin at 10am until 4pm. The agenda as follow, from 9am to 4pm, we will have exhibition with different vendors as we will have 7 different vendors. The general public can browse through the 7 vendors. We will have a program begin at 10am outside in front of State Capitol building. The presenters will includes myself, Chad, maybe Governor’s Office might share a few words with us as this office is interested, Senator Laurie Monnes Anderson might attend, Deaf Grassroot Movement of Oregon, the state representative is Jerry Fleming, Jr. and Mark Hill from Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, and several more presenters. After the presentation, we will have rally and we will parade around the Oregon State Capitol building. We hope the weather will cooperate and give us a beautiful day.

Chad: crossing fingers

Steven: After the rally, we all will take on a lunch break on your own from 12-1pm. After lunch from 1pm to 4pm, the general public can come to our booth as we will have some volunteer help you identify who’s your legislature based on your zip code. The information will be handed to you and all others, this would provide you an opportunity to meet with your legislature to discuss about these five bills as mentioned earlier (1) State Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (2) Mental Health for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individual Bill of Rights Act (3) Language Equality Acquisition for Deaf Kids – (LEAD-K) (4) Captioning Accessibility through the State Legislature on television and web streaming and (5) I can’t seem to remember

Chad: to add the hearing aids in the Oregon Health Benefit

Steven: Oh yes. Thank you, Chad. We will hand you the information who’s your legislature then you can approach them to share your position on these bills by offering an explanation such as support the bill. This will be from 1pm to 4pm then after that, it will be finished. This is an exciting day and thank you.

Chad: This is an important day for Deaf, Deaf-Blind, DeafPlus and Hard of Hearing and your involvement is very important. Thank you again for watching this video.

Steven: Thank you, bye.

Chad: Bye.