Senate Passes HR 152

This afternoon the Senate passed HR 152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013, by a largely partisan vote of 62 to 36. It had earlier turned back an amendment by Sen. Lee (R,UT) by a similar vote. That amendment would have off-set part of the cost of the bill by imposing an across the board FY 2013 spending decrease of 0.46%.

As expected there was no attempt in the Senate to modify the bill to address the issue of the impact of Sandy on the security measures at government regulated facilities. Facilities covered by rules such as CFATS or MTSA will not receive any special assistance to re-establish security measures that were damaged by the storm. Nor were there any requirements laid upon the regulating agencies to determine the extent of potential damage to those security measures.

President Obama is expected to sign HR 152 quickly.

House Amends and Passes HR 152

This evening the House by a mainly Democratic majority (192 Democrats and 49 Republicans voting in the affirmative) passed an amended version of HR 152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013, by a vote of 241 to 180. Amendments brought the spending total to $50.7 Billion and avoided the requirement of off-setting $17 Billion of the spending with an across the board spending reduction for FY 2013.

Seven other amendments were also adopted, four defeated and one was withdrawn.

None of the amendments to the bill provided any specific relief to privately owned facilities that are under homeland security mandates by the Federal government, including facilities covered by the CFATS regulations or the MTSA regulations. The security measures at those facilities are mandated by DHS rules and regulations and are designed to protect local communities and the homeland.

Covered facilities that had their security programs damaged by Hurricane Sandy deserve some assistance in re-establishing those security measures. Perhaps the Senate will be able to address this issue when they take up HR 152 in the coming weeks.

Rule Adopted for Consideration of HR 152

Last night the House Rules Committee adopted the rule for today’s consideration of HR 152, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013. The structured rule calls for consideration of two separate amendments in the form of a substitute and votes on an additional 12 amendments to the bill. None of the amendments deals with recovery of security measures at high-risk facilities with federally mandated security measures such as CFATS or MTSA covered facilities.

An interesting provision of the rule would require the Clerk of the House to incorporate into the passed measure (if passed, of course) the provisions of HR 219,  Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013, that was passed yesterday by the House in recorded vote of 403-0. This is the emergency recovery bill that I briefly discussed in an earlier post. Interestingly, an official version of this bill is still not available on the GPO web site.

Congressional Hearings - Week of 1-13-13

The House comes back to Washington this week, but the Senate is still out until the Inauguration next week. Not much on the Congressional docket this week as ‘organization’ is the key. There is one hearing of potential note; the House Rule Committee looks at HR 152, the second half of the Sandy recovery legislation.

Rules Committee

The House Rules Committee will meet on Monday evening to formulate the rule for the consideration of HR 152, Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013. There are two competing ‘amendments in the form of a substitute’ that will apparently be considered on the House floor and over 90 other amendments have already been offered for consideration. None of them address the issue of assisting the recovery of security at CFATS or MTSA covered facilities.

More Sandy Recovery

There is another Sandy recovery bill that will make its way directly to the floor this week. The Majority Leader’s web page notes that there are plans to bring an as yet un-introduced “Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013” to the floor Monday under suspension of the rules. While there is not a GPO copy of the bill available yet (since it hasn’t been officially introduced) the unofficial version is available via the House Documents Repository.

This bill from Rep. Denham (R,CA) is the typical revision to the FEMA recovery procedures that we see after any major catastrophe. It’s an effort to address some of the recovery issues that were seen after Sandy. This would be the ideal place to address the issue of providing facilities with federally mandated security programs assistance with re-establishing their security measures after a declared emergency from a natural disaster.

Unfortunately there is no such language in the bill and the way it will be considered on Monday will not allow for any amendments; too bad this did not go through the Committee review process.

HR 152 IH Introduced – Hurricane Sandy Relief

Boy did I get this bill wrong in my earlier blog; it is too easy to read into titles. HR 152 introduced last week by Rep. Rogers (R,KY), the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee , is actually the “Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013”. This is the second half of the House version of last sessions HR 1 passed by the Senate. HR 41, the FEMA borrowing authority for Sandy relief that passed last Friday was the first part.

As I noted with the Senate version of HR 1 last month, there is nothing in this bill that would address the recovery of security measures at high-risk chemical facilities (or at MTSA covered facilities, or at nuclear facilities, or LNG facilities for that matter) affected by Sandy. In fact, the only security related funding provided by HR 152 was $3,869,000 allocated to the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office for ‘Systems Acquisition’. Presumably this would be used to replace nuclear detection equipment that had been in place at various East Coast ports that was damaged during the storm. Since this is federally owned equipment it must be replaced with funds from Congress.

Of course the big question for privately owned (and State and local government owned) facilities is who pays to replace/repair damaged security equipment? Until it is replaced, who is paying for the additional security personnel to cover for the damaged equipment? The answer is simple, the facility owner, along with all of the other damaged equipment at the facility.

Who benefits from the security equipment at high-risk facilities, particularly chemical facilities? Not so much the owners, but rather the local neighborhoods and communities. They would be the ones actually targeted by a terrorist attack on these facilities. The longer that it takes to get the security re-established at previous levels the longer the communities will be at risk of a potential terrorist attack.