ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 9, Number 100 December 15, 2000 In this issue: Congress Passes Labor HHS Education Appropriations Bill with Filtering Rider Attached In a 292 to 60 vote, the House of Representatives has passed the Labor HHS Education Appropriations Bill (HR 4577) with the McCain- Santorum-Istook-Pickering Internet filtering rider attached. The Senate also passed the bill with a voice vote (no voting numbers available). The filtering rider mandates that libraries and schools use valuable resources to install and maintain unreliable Internet filters, or be stripped of key federal funding. With this bill, the federal government has seized control over families and communities and blocked their power to make decisions about the ways they protect their children. Our sources say that the Clinton Administration and Congress have reached a $6.5 billion funding increase for the bill. Conference Report funds LSTA library programs at $170 million. ESEA Title VI would be funded at $365.7 million. School library supporters will be pleased to know that there is $1.2 billion for school modernization funds. As part of the Legislative Branch appropriations, GPO received $99.4 million, down from $103.2 million in FY2000. The Library of Congress received $412.3 million, up from $394.4 million for FY 2000. No further details are available at this writing. We have been advised by key Congressional offices that the filtering rider is approximately the language summarized to us in October. But, like the final appropriations numbers themselves, we cannot confirm until we see and review the official bill language which was not available to us today. Since the vote has just taken place we will seek and review the bill as soon as possible. Stand by for future ALAWON reports. ****** 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.