Great Day Today!!!

Well, we passed HB 4091 out of the B&I committee today with a unanimous vote!!! It was extremely uplifting to see the support given to this bill by our representatives during this meeting. Especially from Delegate Clif Moore, he asked for a moment to speak and stated (not-quoting mind you) that it was long overdue that our Legislature did something to help the Autism Community and this should be passed by the House very soon!

The bill was amended in this committee, discussed, questions were asked, some answers were given, and then it went to vote - and passed with no problems!!!

I would highly recommend that we all thank Delegate Kominar (either via phone, face to face, or email) for his efforts in putting our bill on his agenda, getting it amended within his committee, and showing his full support of our bill.

Also, HB 4091 was officially re-named to "Cameron and Dominic's Law", which was also approved unanimously in this meeting!

So, now our next step is to the Finance committee, and we all need to actively contact Delegate White, Finance Chairman, and urge him to put HB 4091 on his Finance agenda as soon as possible. A few of us have already attempted to speak with him directly, of which he was tied up in meetings - so the best thing we can do at this point is call, send regular mail, and emails to him requesting him to get our bill on his agenda ASAP. When I have the next opportunity, I will post all of the Finance committee members contact information on this blog for everyone.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to all of those that were able to make it to the capitol today to support this bill. There are two in particular I would like to thank... 1) The members of the Augusta Levy Learning Center in Wheeling and the parents of those children who attend the A.L.L.C. The A.L.L.C. closed the school today so everyone that wanted to or could attend today's committee meeting could do so. So many thanks to everyone with the A.L.L.C.!!! The second person I would like to thank is a very close and dear friend of mine who is a parent of a son with autism. Due to what she has recently had to go through, I will not state her name on this site - but I had to give her an extra thanks. This wonderful woman attended today's meeting, brought both of her children, and this is where she just recently completed chemotherapy and radiation for cancer that was identified several months ago. Though I know that she would have liked to take the day to continue to gain her strength back, spend time with her family, or day-to-day activities that she has been unable to do due to her treatments. The easy thing for her to do was to simply not attend - but she came with both of her children and did everything she could to support this bill!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Now off to the Finance comittee...