So I'm adding a left column to http://www.kaminskidevelopment.com << this design and using an AP div tag, which may not have been the best way to go (open to suggestion). My footer, however, is receiving overflow from the left hand column and I'm curious as to how I can use the height of the left column to set the minimum y positioning of the footer. Any help, or suggestions to clean up what I already have, would be great! Thanks!
Absolute positioning for major layout elements without a container for them in flow == Miserable /FAIL/ - which is why your footer won't acknowledge it. Absolute positioned elements are not in flow - as such so far as flow elements like the footer is concerned it doesn't even exist. You should be stacking floats for that, and while in there you might want to fix the validation errors, get rid of the miserable /FAIL/ table in the form and make the form accessable (legend + fieldsets) - and you might as well make your headers use the heading tags.