Congressional Hearings – Week of 10-27-13

Both the Senate and the House will be in town this week and the pace of hearings is getting back to normal after the fiscal fiasco has passed. There are four House hearings and one Senate hearing that might be of specific interest to readers of this blog. They include three mark-up hearings, one Coast Guard authorization hearing and one cybersecurity hearing.

Mark-up Hearings

The House Homeland Security Committee will try for a third time on Tuesday to mark-up a group of bills including HR 1204, HR 1791, HR 2952, and HR 3107. I wrote about this hearing in some detail last week on the second attempt to hold this hearing.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a mark-up hearing on Tuesday that will address four bills including HR 3300, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of 2013 that I described yesterday. No word yet on any potential amendments.

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will have a Business Meeting today. It will either include a mark-up of some legislation, consider nominations or both; no agenda has been published.

Coast Guard Authorization

The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will meet on Tuesday to look at a variety of issues that might be included in a Coast Guard authorization bill. The current ‘Summary of Subject Matter’ published by the Committee does not include mention of any security or chemical safety issues.

Cybersecurity

Wednesday will see a potentially interesting take on cybersecurity when the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications and the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protections and Security Technologies of the House Homeland Security Committee (whew, that’s a lot of words) hold a joint hearing on “Cyber Incident Response: Bridging the Gap Between Cybersecurity and Emergency Management”. No agenda or witness list is currently available.

HR 3300 Introduced – FEMA Authorization

As I mentioned in an earlier post Rep. Shuster (R,PA) introduced HR 3300, the FEMA Reauthorization Act of 2013. The bill provides for funding the Federal Emergency Management Agency through 2016 at a flat annual rate of $972,145,000 {§101}, down from the FY 2013 funding of $973,118,000. There is not much else in this bill.

Section 102 does provide for the modernization of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. The language roughly parallels that found in HR 3283 that I have previously discussed. There are a number of editorial differences that might be of interest to lawyers, but nothing that appears to be of consequence beyond the fact that this version does not actually amend the Homeland Security Act. That means that the provisions and requirements laid out here would remain fairly buried and out of general public notice once this becomes law.

Section 201 reauthorizes the Urban Search and Rescue Response System; adding §327 to Title III of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 USC 5141 et seq.). It makes some HR changes to the way individuals appointed to the system are placed into limited Federal Service to allow “for the participation of the System member in exercises, preincident staging, major disaster and emergency response activities, and training events sponsored or sanctioned by the Administrator” {§327(f)}.

Section 202 reauthorizes FEMA to make grants to provide for implementation of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact. FEMA is authorized to make grants totaling $2 million each fiscal year through 2016. The funds would remain available until expended.

As usual, I am disappointed that there is no mention of any FEMA responsibility for working with State or Local Planning Committees on emergency response planning for accidental or deliberate chemical releases. LPCs and their State counterparts are required by EPA rules, but there is no funding or oversight provided for these organizations that should be an integral part of planning for potential chemical disasters. Realistically, that type of grant funding or program oversight belongs under FEMA.

Congress has not passed a FEMA authorization bill since 2006. This bill looks like it has avoided any of the controversies that have impeded consideration of past bills. Rep. Shuster is Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee which is the only committee to which this bill has been referred. Rapid action within the Committee is expected, but we will have to wait and see how quickly it makes it to the floor.

Bills Introduced – 10-22-13

The House is back from their shortened district work period and are at work at a slightly slower pace this week. Only 17 pieces of legislation were introduced yesterday and two of those were condolence resolutions for a deceased Representative and a former Representative. Two other bills might be of interest to readers of this blog:

HR 3300 Latest Title: To reauthorize the programs and activities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Sponsor: Rep Shuster, Bill (R,PA)

HR 3303 Latest Title: To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for regulating medical software, and for other purposes. Sponsor: Rep Blackburn, Marsha (R,TN)

Both of these bills seem to be relatively high-priority for someone as they have already been published by the GPO. I’ll have more details on these bills later.