SB 83-VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION COMMITTEE  1:35:26 PM CHAIR PASKVAN announced SB 83 to be up for consideration. SENATOR THOMAS moved to adopt CSSB 83(L&C) 26-GS1024\R and objected for discussion purposes. 1:36:13 PM PAULA SCAVARA, Legislative Liaison, Department of Labor and Workforce Development (DOLWD), said SB 83 complies state law with federal law by changing the Governor's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities (GCEPD) to the State Vocational Rehabilitation Committee. Nothing else has been subtracted or added other than what was required by federal law. Section 1 repeals the GCEPD and creates the State Vocational Rehabilitation Committee and section 2 inserts the appointment, number and composition of the committee members. Actually instead of putting in the number, which is constantly changing in federal law, they put in the federal code. So now those changes can be made without coming to the legislature for a statute change. Section 3 addresses the selection of the chair; Section 4 provides for how many times the committee shall meet and that the meetings can be conducted telephonically; Section 5 addresses the transition of current members of the GCEPD; Section 6 is a revisor's note changing the name of the committee throughout statute to the State Vocational Rehabilitation Committee. CHAIR PASKVAN asked her to relate the changes in CS to the original SB 83. MS. SCAVARA explained this is probably the smallest CS she has ever seen and that it corrected a typo in Section 2 on page 2, line that changes U.S.C. Code "3001" to "3003". 1:38:51 PM SENATOR BUNDE asked if members can also vote telephonically. CHERYL WALSH, Director, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Department of Labor and Workforce Development (DOLWD), answered yes. 1:40:49 PM SENATOR MEYER asked if they currently get 70 percent of the funding for this committee from the feds. MS. WALSH answered yes. SENATOR MEYER asked if that amount was subject to change in the future. MS. WALSH replied the feds use a formula that she would get for him and the state has matching requirements. Now it is 70/30. SENATOR MEYER asked if it had been that way for a long time. MS. WALSH answered yes. SENATOR MEYER said the committee membership changes frequently and asked if that's one of the reasons for the bill. MS. WALSH answered yes. The composition could change when the Rehabilitation Act is reauthorized and they wanted to avoid making changes each time that happens by simply citing the federal regulation. SENATOR MEYER said it may end up costing the state in the future if the number of members can increase. MS. WALSH replied that they would have more telephonic meetings rather than have that happen. There are other ways of doing cost saving. For instance, the committee needs to have a broad representation of people with disabilities and people from the business community; so they could find one person to fill that requirement. SENATOR MEYER thought they could maybe do a sunset in five years to see if matching money from the feds changes. MS. WALSH replied that the difficulty with that is that this committee is required for them to receive the federal funding to run the Vocational Rehabilitation program itself. This is just the oversight committee for the program. A sunset date could impede their ability to receive federal dollars. SENATOR THOMAS removed his objection. CHAIR PASKVAN announced that without further objection CSSB 83, version R, was adopted. CHAIR PASKVAN asked for further testimony on the CS and found none. SENATOR THOMAS moved to report CSSB 83(L&C) from committee with individual recommendations and accompanying fiscal note. There were no objections and it was so ordered.