Tuesday's Quick Hits: This Weeks Policy Overview

North Carolina:

Transportation:
Today at the General Assembly the first meeting of the Transportation Oversight Committee took place. Today’s meeting included a presentation on the transformation of the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The 21st century NCDOT vision, as presented, will include the following:
-focus on network connectivity and function, not just projects
-enhance systems operations, to leverage existing infrastructure
-establish network performance standards
-greater internal efficiency, ownership and accountability
-prioritized, outcome-based budgets
-link infrastructure delivery and statewide commerce goals
-culture shift, become true service providers

Affordable, accessible, and reliable transportation is a major policy topic for the disability community. Accessible transportation allows us to remain in our communities and provides us a way to access employment opportunities.

Economic Development:
Wednesday the Joint Select Committee on Economic Development Incentives will meet. We will be monitoring this meeting. It is important that as we look at investing in incentive packages for companies to move to North Carolina, that we look at their record of hiring and retaining people with disabilities as employees. Diversity Inc. posts a list annually of the top companies to work for if you are a person with a disability.

Read the current list:
Diversity Inc List of Top 10 Companies:
http://www.diversityinc.com/public/1787.cfm


Federal:

Employment:

On Wednesday, U. S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao will recognize employers and individuals for their contributions in employing people with disabilities at an awards ceremony. DPC staff will attend this event.

On Thursday, the House Workforce Protections Subcommittee of the Education and Labor Committee will hold a hearing on H.R. 3582, the Fair Home Health Care Act. The bill creates more limited circumstances in which home health care workers can be exempted from overtime and other provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.


(Special thanks to DPC for providing the Federal Updates)