STATE OF THE ASSOCIATION

ALOA continues to offer you more for your money by working smarter for you By Charles W. Gibson, Jr., CAE, Executive Director

The Board of directors requires that I report to the Membership annually concerning the state of the association and its financial condition. The Board has established "Ends", or goals, for the association. The staff then determines and carries out the "Means" to achieve these Ends. The Board has established five Ends. These Ends in order of priority are Legisla-tion, Communication, Education, Recognition and Professionalism. I make periodic reports to the Board concerning progress toward these Ends. The reports are on our web site www. aloa.org. The report I am making to the membership in this issue of Keynotes is a shorter version of these reports. For a better understanding of the manner in which the as-sociation is governed, members are invited to read the Board's Governance Policy. The pol-icy is available on line at www. aloa.org. You may also request a copy by contacting the ALOA office at (800) 532-2562.

END 1: LEGISLATION

lt's been a busy year so far, as the ALOA Legislative Depart-ment closely monitored over 35 bills (after reading through 700!). We also had some successes: amending a Montana bill so that locksmiths may install CCTV and access control devices without having to get an alarm license; making some changes in the Tennessee law to keep it from being re-voked; defeating legislation in Oklahoma that would have rescinded the recently enacted locksmith licensing law and a last-minute attempt by foes in that state to insert language to open a wide loophole into the law.

ALOA continues to monitor statehouses in Massachusetts,North Carolina, New Jersey and Ohio that are still in ses-sion with important bills pending.

We've also had tremendous success with wide press cover-age of the "phony locksmith" issue. In many news reports,ALOA's is cited as the "go to" source for more information. This nationwide effort has influenced states to introduce locksmith licensing legislation. So far, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland and Wisconsin are working on legisla-tion for 2008.

ln April, ALOA Legislative Manager, Tim McMullen, JD, CAE made a follow-up presentation to the National Associ-ation of Attorney's General Consumer Protection Committee regarding the issue of "phony locksmiths". At the last year's presentation to them, the Attorney's General noted that they must receive complaints from consumers before pursuing. In response, ALOA created a complaint page accessible from the front page of the ALOA website. A Press Release was distributed to the media, and Tim has already been getting follow-up calls. You can take a look at the page (and refer people to it) at: http://www.aloa.org/AGMap/AG.htm

Tim also asked that the Attorney's General to post ALOA's 10-point checklist for consumers for detecting companies that may be engaging in this scheme. He also presented them a 53-page compilation of phone book page ads and internet listings as a sample of this widespread problem.

ALOA offered to work with Consumer Protection Divisions to improve the enforcement and information exchange among the states with respect to investigations, litigation and con-sumer education.

END 2: COMMUNICATION

"Communication" was changed from priority four to two at last fall's Board Meeting. The Board intended, through this change, to increase the association's focus on communica-tion.

l have just finalized a contract with a provider of an associ-ation management software. Separately we will redesign and improve the website. These two projects together will create a number of the capabilities that the Board has asked for. On-line maintenance of membership data by the mem-ber, on-line convention registration, one password for the site and a secure member forum are among these capabili-ties. These changes will take time. We have provided sam-ples of data to the software company. They will have to write the program(s) necessary to transfer data from our ex-isting program to the new one. In addition, program(s) must be written to transfer the data from the current PRP data-base to the new program. All of these things must be tested, the functionality of the new on-line features must be tested. The staff has to be trained. Before the end of the year, the capabilities described above should be operational.

END 3: EDUCATION 
From July, 2006 thru July 14, 2007, the ALOA Continuing Education (ACE) program conducted 194 full day and 46 half-day ACE classes & seminars at 33 locations. This amounts to a total of 4,064 student class days conducted in the last year. It should be noted that 107 of these full day classes were conducted away from the ALOA convention throughout the US and Canada. Over the past several years, well more than half of ALOA's education has been away from the ALOA convention. This makes certification and re-certifi-cation easier for members. The ALOA Training Center is in its second year of operation. The Center is in Dallas at the ALOA Headquarters. The schedule continues to grow with three Six-day Basic Locksmithing Courses, a Three-day Auto-motive Locksmith course and many more classes planned for the remainder of 2007 and 2008. We have also conducted business ethics classes for Texas locksmith licensing require-ments in the Center.

Proficiency Registration Program (A Component of Educa-tion):

Since July 1,2006, we administered the PRP at 50 regular sittings with 480 participants since July 2006. In addition there were 45 ACE classes that provided after class PRP exams. There were 368 students that chose the option to take the after-class PRP's. The pass rate for these exams is 89%. There are 5 new CML's, 11 new CPL's and 78 new CRL's. As of July 1,2007 there are 722 CML's, 663 CPL's, 2811 CRL's and RL's (646 grand fathered RL's). There are 3751 regis-trants in the program who have taken but not passed some portion of the CRL requirement. There are a total of 7947 participants in the PRP database at this time. ALOA also ad-ministers the SAVTA STPRP. There are 11 CMST's, 209 CPS's and 205 who have taken and not passed the CPS or CMST exam.

END 4: RECOGNITION 
I am a member of the Board of Directors of The National Auto-motive Service Task Force, Inc. (NASTF). My participation in the group brings ALOA to the attention of many associations, automobile manufacturers and other organizations in the auto- motive industry. The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) also works with NASTF. Because of this the NICB is much more aware of ALOA and its member locksmiths. Bill Young (past president of ALOA) and Ken Kupferman (president elect) are both members of the Vehicle Security Committee of NASTF. Their participation with this committee also serves to fulfill this End. In addition, it is the purpose of NASTF to facilitate distri-bution of after market repair information from manufacturers. In our case, this is mechanical key codes and electronic infor-mation such as PINs.

The primary effort in increasing the use of the logo during the past year was the use of the slogan, "Locksmiths You Can Trust". This slogan has been printed with the ALOA logo. It was unveiled to the membership in Keynotes and in a sepa-rate mailing in February. We have had very good response to this initiative.

Advertisements will be published throughout the year in Maintenance Solutions and Security Solutions for the Enter-prise Leader as a way to increase ALOA recognition. Mainte-nance Solutions has 35,000 subscribers that are facility decision makers representing both institutional and commer-cial buildings. Our focus was membership recruitment. Our ads in Security Solutions for the Enterprise Leaders are to pro-mote ALOA's certification, education and training center. The audience is 31,000 subscribers comprised of Security/Loss Prevention, Executives and Financial Managers and Facili-ties/Operations Managers.

END 5: PROFESSIONALISM Following the adoption of the requirement to obtain a profi-ciency designation to maintain membership, I expected a drop in the membership renewal rate. Our renewal rate for 2006 was lower than 2005. However, so far in 2007 re-newals are quite good. Requests for education and PRP sit-tings for 2007 are also up. It appears that many members, local associations and chapters are preparing to meet the standards rather than drop out because of them.

ALOA has participated with several industry groups on many issues. David Lowell, CML, CMST represents ALOA on the UL Standards Technical Panel for Physical Security Devices, (STP687) which this last year updated the standards for UL 0680 - Emergency Vault Ventilators and Vault-Ventilating Ports, UL140 - Standard for Relocking Devices for Safes and Vaults, UL291 - Automated Teller Systems, UL1034 - Burglary Re-sistant Electric Locking Mechanisms...They are continuing to work on a proposed High Security Electronic Locks Standard- UL2058 and have formed a Task Group to review the re- quirements of UL1034 - Standard for Burglary-Resistant Elec-tric Locking Mechanisms. David also represents ALOA on the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM International)Security Systems and Equipment Committee F-12 which is meeting in April 2007 (Subcommittee F 12.50 Locking De-vices) to address the issue of bump keys and to distinguish the levels of protection that may be provided for this and other surreptitious attacks in a comprehensive standard.

FINANCIAL REPORT

The firm of Sutton Frost Cary was engaged to audit the 2006 ALOA financial records. The ALOA Audit Committee has reviewed this report. Parts of the Audit, the "Statement of Financial Position" (Balance Sheet) and the "Statement of Activities" (Profit and Loss) are printed with this article. The Auditor found that ALOA's financial records fairly and accurately portray ALOA's financial po-sition. The most positive aspect of ALOA's 2006 financial activity was a much reinforced cash position. ALOA gained $267,000 cash. The major part of this was the effort to convert "accounts payable" into cash. ALOA's operations also yielded a small profit. The purpose of ALOA is not to make money. The purpose is to provide specified services to members. It is however, necessary to be sta-ble financially to provide services. ALOA continues to be financially capable of providing the services specified by the Board of Directors.