"in an accessible format" to applicants and employees, thus giving employers flexibility with regard to individuals who have vision impairments.

TITLE IV--PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS

1. Public Accommodations: The term "potential place of employment" has been deleted from the definition of a "public accommodation" in the compromise bill. The term appears only with regard to new construction, to cover, for example, commercial buildings that do not yet have identified tenants at the time of construction.

2. Readily Achievable: At the request of the Administration and the business community a definition of "readily achievable" is included in the compromise bill. Under this definition, removal of architectural or communication barriers is "readily achievable" if it is "easily accomplishable and able to be carried out without much difficulty or expense."

3. Retrofitting Existing structures: The only retrofitting of existing structures required under the ADA is that which is "readily achievable"--which, as noted above, is now defined in the bill. The compromise bill also further defines the requirements of accessibility when facilities undergo major alterations and renovations.

4. Transportation: The provision regarding purchase, by public accommodations, of new vehicles that can carry in excess of 12 passengers has been modified in the compromise bill to take into account the concerns of the business community. The new provision covers vehicles that can carry in excess of 16 passengers and incorporates a program access element.

5. Public Transportation: The need for accessible public transportation has been demonstrated throughout the process of this bill, through countless letters and testimony. The Bush Administration has stated its strong support for this particular provision of the bill.

6. Standards: It is expected that the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board will use and build upon existing federal standards, to the extent they are consistent with the ADA.

7. Enforcement: For the public accommodation section of the ADA, as requested by the Administration and the business community, the compromise bill incorporates the enforcement section of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, together with pattern or practice suits brought by the Attorney General. Private plaintiffs are not permitted to seek monetary damages.

TITLE VI--MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS

1. Effective Date: The compromise bill changes the effective date of the ADA. The employment section becomes effective 24 months after enactment; the public services and the public accommodations sections become effective 18 months after enactment.

2. Insurance Underwriting: The compromise bill includes a specific provision clarifying that the ADA is not intended to disrupt the current nature of insurance underwriting.

We hope these responses will be useful to the Committee as it proceeds to consider H.R. 2273, the Americans with Disabilities Act. As you can see, all of the concerns raised by the Disability Rights Working Group can be dealt with through clarifying language. None of the concerns address the core protections of the bill, which remain in the compromise bill adopted by the Senate.

We look forward to working with you as you move forward with this historic piece of legislation extending protection for people with disabilities.

Sincerely,

Chai R. Feldbl

Chai R. Feldblum, Esq.
on behalf of the
Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman, I would also say that it would be of great help to me if the Leadership Conference would submit both to the subcommittee and submit to me either verbally or in writing or just some set of commentary on how you would see those objections or those concerns planning out.

Mr. Chairman, it has been a very helpful hearing and I very much appreciate the chairman's additional time that he offered

me.

Chairman OWENS. You do have copies?

Ms. FELDBLUM. Yes, I do.

Chairman OWENS. Thank you. Mr. Jontz.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman, I also would ask unanimous consent to enter my opening statement which I didn't give into the record.

Chairman OWENS. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. JONTZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank each of you for your helpful statements this morning. Mr. Dart, you noted in your testimony that there has been some opposition expressed to ADA. Perhaps some of the opposition which has been expressed or may be expressed as the result, would be the result of misunderstandings about the bill.

Can you identify for the subcommittee any misunderstandings that you see or hear that would be helpful for us to be aware of, some points that may be raised that you feel are the result of misunderstandings that we should be alert to?

Mr. DART. One that I have heard is the fear that many existing businesses and especially small businesses maybe owned by families would be forced to do very expensive total renovations of their establishment which would, in effect, put them out of business and, of course, the bill does not require anything of that nature.

It requires new facilities to be accessible and very reasonable and modest changes to be made in present current facilities, present existing facilities, but I find that the major-what I view as the major misunderstanding of the effect of the bill is that which I addressed in my testimony, the fear of massive cost which I think is the fear of the unknown and I would like to state in that regard, that I have now on three occasions sat down with distinguished Task Forces of conservatives and independents, and liberals, Republicans, Democrats for the first time in Texas and now twice on the national level, in situations where some very conservative businessman and economist sat down and studied this issue over a period of months or years and I cannot think of a single individual among that group, including in Texas, the budget director under the Clement's administration.

As you know, Governor Clements was not widely thought to be a spendthrift liberal and his budget director was the vice chair of a task force which I chair and it took him-he was a Ph.D. in economics and he was very conservative and he was sort of the David Stockman of the Clements Administration-it took him about two weeks to become a fan and a total supporter of disability rights because he saw the economists of it and I really believe that the cost factor is the largest area of misunderstanding based on principally unfair, the unknown, because as a businessman, I have made many, many of the accommodations required by ADA and I know

other businessmen who have made the public entities and it is simply just good business.

It doesn't cost a lot of money. It results in profit and goodwill and other factors that are not only totally affordable, but totally affordable.

Mr. JONTZ. Thank you. I wonder if I might ask Ms. Feldblum if she would identify any other misconceptions about the legislation that we ought to be alert to.

Ms. FELDBLUM. I think the one that I would identify is really almost a follow up, one that has just been said. I think you will often hear-you have heard it today-that there are things that seem to be new and different and undefined in the bill that it is going to be hard to be understand, hard to implement.

I think one of the basic approaches of this bill is that it does follow from the basic concepts, regulations and caselaw of Section 504 which has been in practice for fifteen years and is very well understood.

It is not an undefined quality drafted bill. It is a very well defined, clearly drafted bill based on the experience of Section 504, so I think that anytime that you hear from someone, this is not defined and I don't understand it, it is worth asking the follow-up questions, "what words don't you understand?" and I think often you will find that those are the words that have been used for fifteen years in Section 504 with very clear guidelines and without a problem for employers such as those who have been under Section 504, those who have done it on their own. I think that is the main thing.

Mr. JONTZ. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman OWENS. Thank you. I would like to ask Mr. Dart if he would take a few minutes to describe the types of materials that are contained in these boxes. I asked that they be placed up here so that the members of the committee and the audience could see the tremendous results of your work on the task force.

I would like for you to take a few minutes to describe the kinds of things that are contained in these boxes?

Mr. DART. These are letters from people with disabilities describing in answer to the call of the Task Force. They are describing discrimination that they have experienced generally and usually expressing their advocacy for solutions specifically to Americans with Disabilities Act.

These are some petitions, a good number of several hundred probably petitions and not several hundred signatures, several hundred petitions of individuals supporting the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are discrimination dairies where people have kept a dairy over a period of time, listing specific discrimination that they have experienced and there are tapes, videotapes, audio tapes with similar evidence.

Chairman OWENS. Again, I would think that in the process of answering some of the detailed questions as we move forward to perfect this bill, much of this material will be useful.

I will direct my staff to certainly make it available to all of the members of the committee. We do intend to index it in a way that would make it fairly easy to use.

Again, I want to thank Mr. Dart for that effort. Finally, I would like to ask any member of the panel if there is any final comment they would like to make as we go forward; not just comments about the bill, but also the process, and about the fact that we have deliberately-in response to the leadership and the disabilities rights community-placed a great deal of emphasis today on the parallel between this effort to pass this bill and the efforts that were launched in the '60s with the civil rights movement.

As we move forward in that process, I welcome any insights, comments, recommendations you have on process as well as on the substance of the bill.

Mr. DART. Mr. Chairman, I think that I have pretty well covered what I would like to recommend in my statement. I would like to repeat my congratulations to you and my deepest respect for you on your support for the rights and the empowerment of people with disabilities.

It has been a real privilege to work with you and your magnificent staff, Bob Tate, Maria Cuprill, Pat Laird and others over the past fifteen months.

Chairman OWENS. Ms. Feldblum?

Ms. FELDBLUM. I would just like to actually repeat what has been said often here this morning already, that people with disabilities do not have the right to be free of discrimination in all areas of society today and the way that people have the right to be free of discrimination because of current laws on the base of race, religion, national origin and et cetera.

It would be critical that this Congress very quickly pass this bill that would finally give that right to people with disabilities. Chairman OWENS. Brother Nelan?

Brother NELAN. We feel that the expansion of the civil rights bill to the disability community is really morally correct and we must do all to support it, but truly, though, we find that there are ambiguities in the bill, certain areas that are not clear and certain impositions upon employers as it is drafted, but we feel too that certainly it is going to all be ironed out by the Congress before the bill is enacted.

Mr. OWENS. I want to thank all of you for being excellent witnesses. You heard from the chairman of the Democratic caucus, a commitment of the leadership in the House of Representatives to move this bill rapidly.

Come and go with us. We have begun this morning and we look forward to the passage of this legislation. Again, thank you very much.

The joint hearing is now ended.

[Whereupon, the subcommittee hearing ended at 12:30 p.m.] [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]