Reader Comment – CFATS Inspectors vs Admins

This morning an anonymous reader left a comment on yesterday’s post, Industry Still Wants CFATS Back. Anonymous made a painful point that I failed to mention:

“Boots on the ground inspectors who truly hold the institutional knowledge is the significant loss.”

There is no doubt that facilities had Chemical Security Inspectors as their primary point of contact with the CFATS program. The experience and knowledge that these CSI accumulated and shared over the 15+ years of operation of the program were a major factor in smoothing the impact of the program on individual facilities. This is a major part of the industry’s acceptance and support of the program.

But it pains me to hear the negative comments that Anonymous had about the leadership. There will always be a disconnect between organizational leadership and the boots on the ground, but for organizations like the Alliance for Chemical Distribution, it was the leadership and headquarters staff that were the primary points of contact. The leaderships’ willingness to work with industry to craft how the program implemented the congressional requirements was also important for industry acceptance of the program. Both parts of the organization were important to the success of the program.

Still questions have been raised about the leadership’s role in ensuring the continuation of the program. In hindsight, the leadership at the Office of Chemical Security, CISA and DHS did a reasonable job ensuring that there was widespread, bipartisan support for a relatively minor chemical security program. What killed the program was the opposition of a single Senator {and perhaps one other Senator, Sen Johnson (R,WI) who might have taken the same action if Sen Paul had not stood in opposition to the consideration of HR 4470)}. People forget that HR 4470 passed in the House by a vote of 409 to 1. It is hard to fault the OCS or CISA leadership for achieving that ‘limited’ level of Congressional support.