Wendi,
First let me thank you for your post. 
The idea of local or regional chapters of NALTEA has been brought up & discussed by the board before.  At that time we all agreed that it sounded like a wonderful idea.  The problems that you face can be different then someone in another state or even another county.  If we had a number of different chapters working on their particular problems & also bringing it to the board so that we could all be kept up to date, share ideas & plans that might be helpful to other chapters etc., we thought would be very valuable & successful. 
The only problem that we see, is manpower.  Can you get enough volunteers to join & to contribute. 
The one comment that you made in your post regarding complaining and then waiting for NALTEA to come up with something is unfortunately all too true.  We have over 100 active members, but there are probably less then twenty people that are actively working on committees etc.  We have sent out a number of questionnaires, asked people to contribute to the newsletter,  either by writing an article or a letter to the editor.  Almost every article I write I ask for peoples comments.  Want to guess how many people actually answer any of these requests?  Less then 5.  I recall 2, but I am going to be generous. 
I can not speak for everyone, but I sometimes feel that I am beating my head against a wall.  I try to log onto SOT everyday & read the forum.  I keep hearing the same complaints day in & day out;  abstractors undercutting fees,  clients asking you to cut your fees, clients not paying you, on line searching & outsourcing overseas.  inexperienced abstractors, county mis indexing.  We all know what the problems are.  But until we band together & try to do something about it, these problems will continue and probably get worse.  I can not promise you that all your problems will disappear if you join & work with NALTEA.  But I do know that the 20 or so of us who work every single day at it are trying to do something!  I think that Robert mentioned to me that there were 3000+ abstractors across the US.  So you can see we have our work cut out for us.  I intend to keep trying & I welcome any help I can get. 

Wanda Steudel
AccuSearch Co
NALTEA President