ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 9, Number 80 October 4, 2000 In this issue: [1] ICANN: ELECTIONS BEGIN [2] APPROPRIATIONS: CONGRESS MAY CONTINUE TO DELIBERATE THANKS TO ANOTHER CONTINUING RESOLUTION [3] FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY RELEASES INFORMATION ON BUILDINGS UNDER THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE PROGRAM [1] ICANN ELECTIONS BEGIN October 1, 2000 marked the beginning of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board member elections. If you are a registered ICANN At-Large member, you should have received your ballot packet via mail from Election.com-make sure to cast your ballot! The ICANN board will make some important decisions in the coming year concerning new top-level domain names for Internet users, like .org, .com and .edu. North American board member candidates (there are five world regions total) include several folks who are very committed to the public interest. Any of these nominees would provide a much-needed balance to corporate industry's influence on the ICANN Board. For information on these and other candidates, please see the Center for Democracy and Technology's site: www.cdt.org. All candidate statements and bios can be found on ICANN's site at http://members.icann.org/nominees.html. If you are not yet an At-Large member, visit the Office for Information Technology Policy's ICANN information web site at http://www.ala.org/oitp/icann/, to find out how to register for future elections. [2] CONGRESS MAY CONTINUE TO DELIBERATE THANKS TO ANOTHER CONTINUING RESOLUTION H.J. Resolution 110, the second continuing resolution passed the House on Tuesday, October 3, and the Senate will consider it on Wednesday, October 4. The resolution would continue government and extend the work schedule of Congress to October 14. INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS: On October 3, the House passed the FY 2001 Interior Appropriations Conference Report (H.R. 4578, H. Rept. 106-914). The Conference was completed on September 29. The Conference report includes $105 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, with $7 million of that to go to the Challenge America project; $120.2 million for the National Endowment for the Humanities and $600 thousand for the museum portion of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, bringing the total to $24.9 million. The Senate is debating the measure today, October 4. [3] FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY RELEASES INFORMATION ON BUILDINGS UNDER THE PUBLIC ASSISTANCE PROGRAM Public libraries housed in buildings that are part of county government may be interested to learn that FEMA published the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on February 23, 2000, on insurance requirements, procedures and eligibility criteria with respect to buildings under the Public Assistance Program. The ANPR described a range of issues with the insurance element o the Public Assistance Program, listed possible options to address them, and included several specific questions about how the Program could be improved. The deadline for comments was April 10, 2000, and a summary of the responses FEMA received will be published in the Federal Register. ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Mary Costabile, Peter Kaplan, Miriam Nisbet and Claudette Tennant. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell and Saundra Shirley. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.