Hayley here, with exciting news to share today—we now have a public hearing on our Co-Navigator bill, HB 3287, on April 13th at 8:00 am. We will be selecting only two DeafBlind witnesses to testify in person, per recommendation by our lobbying team.
At this point, please STOP contacting legislators—including senators. We will ask you to resume this advocacy activity at a later date, upon direction from our lobbying team.
Still, we would love to have written testimonies if you want to do more. You can send them to us at info@texascn.org, by Monday, April 12th at noon, and we will deliver them to the committee clerk. In your written testimony, be sure to include your name, street address and email address. Your stories are important, you have a say!
If our bill gets voted favorably out of the House Committee on Human Services, the bill will be sent up to the full House chamber, for a vote by all of the representatives. We will keep you posted on the need to take action again, but in the meantime, please hold tight.
On a related matter, yesterday afternoon two Deafblind coalition members—Kim Powers and Sarah McMillen—together with our lobbyists, went to the Capitol and met with the staff of Senator Bryan Hughes, who authored SB 1715 and Representative Mary González, who authored HB 3287. These two super-supportive legislators are working hard to get our bill passed, and they each gave Kim and Sarah helpful advice on perfecting testimony, in preparation for Tuesday’s hearing.
Stay tuned!
Cheers,
Hayley