S 1243 Introduced – FT 2014 DOT Spending

As I mentioned in an earlier post Sen. Murray (D,WA) introduced S 1243, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014. This bill does not actually include any specific chemical safety or cybersecurity (beyond Department IT cybersecurity spending) provisions. The Senate Appropriations Committee report does, however, include hazmat transportation safety provisions and limited cybersecurity provisions.

Cybersecurity

The Report accompanying this bill briefly addresses a unique set of control system security concerns. First the report notes that 77% of the Department’s cybersecurity budget (or $105 million) is directed to the budget of the Federal Aviation Administration. The Report then goes on to note that two separate DOT IG reports indicate “the FAA had not adequately implemented security requirements for its Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast System” (pg 33) or its En Route Automation Modernization System. The report concludes that the Committee “expects the Vice President of [FAA] Program Management to coordinate with the CIO for the FAA and for the Department to ensure the security of FAA’s systems is made a high priority”

PHMSA Spending

The spending bill provides modest increases in funding for PHMSA programs. Both the Pipeline Safety Fund and the HAZMAT show increases over the pre-sequester FY 2013 spending, but the HAZMAT program is slightly less than requested by the President. The President continues to propose a HAZMAT special permit fee in his budget, but “the Committee believes that such a fee should be established through the regulatory process or should be addressed through the authorization process” (pgs 90-1) and does not include that in the bill.

Moving Forward

Because of Constitutional limitations, this bill will probably not be brought up until the House passes their version of the bill at which time the Senate would typically substitute this language for the House wording, pass the bill (probably with a number of amendments) and then go to conference to iron out the differences.

In recent years this bill is usually folded into the Omnibus spending bill because Congress has been unable to pass all 13 of the individual appropriations bills before the end of the fiscal year on September 30^th. I suspect that that will occur this year as well.