
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 14, 1990                   TAG: 9003143062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

ACTIVISTS NOT HAPPY WITH PACE OF BILL ON DISABLED

A House committee took this year's first significant action on a major civil rights bill for disabled Americans on the same day that scores of protesters demanding its immediate enactment were arrested and carted off in their wheelchairs.

"It is a priority for passage in this session of the Congress," House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., told unpacified demonstrators Tuesday inside the Capitol.

The Energy and Commerce Committee, meantime, approved the Americans With Disabilities Act by a 40-3 vote after amending it to soften the impact on Amtrak and make other minor changes.

Police arrested 104 people, many of whom had chained their wheelchairs together, after deliberate acts of civil disobedience following a confrontation in the Capitol Rotunda with Foley and House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill.

"I am absolutely satisfied it will reach the floor, we will have a conference with the Senate and it will become law," Foley told the demonstrators. "Will it be on the floor in 24 hours? No."

Protesters demanding that the bill be passed within one day greeted that remark with boos.

Advocates say that further delays leave the bill vulnerable to "killer amendments," such as one that would exempt small businesses from requirements to accommodate people with handicaps.

The compromise between disabilities activists and the Amtrak passenger railroad was the first House committee vote on the bill this year. The Education and Labor Committee approved the bill last November by a vote of 35-0. The Senate, where one committee had jurisdiction, passed the bill last September by a 76-8 vote.

Full hearings are expected later this month by both the House Judiciary and Public Works and Transportation committees, meaning the landmark legislation could become law this spring.

The pace of the bill through Congress has slowed considerably since last fall, when supporters predicted President Bush would receive a bill by Christmas.

The bill would guarantee the rights of America's disabled population, estimated to be at least 43 million, to employment, phone service and public and private accommodations such as restaurants, shops and shopping malls.

Members of the small-business community say the bill imposes an unfair and costly burden on them at the same time it sets ill-defined standards that will lead to endless litigation.

Supporters point to the enthusiastic support of the White House and say the Senate version carefully phases in the requirements while exempting the smallest businesses from its employment provisions.

Recent statements by the Justice Department have raised questions about White House commitment to the bill because of its relationship to other civil rights legislation that the White House opposes.

Those questions, combined with delays in moving the bill through Congress, gave rise to a peaceful demonstration Monday outside the Capitol and the more boisterous one Tuesday.

The protesters face possible sentences of up to six months in jail on each of the charges against them: unlawful entry and demonstrating inside the Capitol.

by CNB