S 2297 Introduced – CG Authorization

Just before the summer recess Sen. Sullivan (R,AK) introduced S 2297, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2019. This annual bill provides continued authority for the operation of the Coast Guard and makes changes to that operation. The House version of this bill (HR 3409) passed in the House by a voice vote.

Port Security

Section 231 of the bill amends 46 USC 70116 which was completely re-written in the last session’s CG Authorization Act (PL 115-282 or S 140 as the PL has yet to be published). This new language expands the authority of DHS (presumably through the Coast Guard) to prevent or respond to security incidents beyond just ‘an act of terrorism’. The Department would have additional authority to prevent or respond to “cyber incidents, transnational organized crime, and foreign state threats” in both subsections (a) and (b).

The DHS actions in support of this authority are exempted from the Administrative Procedures and the Analysis of Regulatory Functions chapters of 5 USC.

No changes were made to the identical language to the existing §70116 found in §70102a.

Security Plan Review

Section 308 of this bill would provide the same requirement for DHS to review MTSA security plans updates as found in §317 of the House bill.

Moving Forward

Sullivan is the Chair of the Security Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. As such he is at least partially responsible for Coast Guard related legislation (the security related provisions anyway) in that Committee. Sen. Markey (D,MA) is the Ranking Member of that Subcommittee and is a cosponsor of this bill. This bill will almost certainly be taken up in Committee in the coming months and it would appear that it would have substantial bipartisan support.

Commentary

It is interesting that none of the cybersecurity provisions found in the House bill (none of them really important or significant) were included in this bill. Markey has tried to make himself known as the cybersecurity senator, but that interest was not apparently extended to Coast Guard operations.

The expansion of the security interests of the Coast Guard is another oddity of this bill. It is not clear to me why Congress created identically worded Sections 70102a and 70116 last session, but it boggles the mind even more why only one of those sections would be changed to provide additional reaction authority to the Coast Guard. There is some sort of legislative logic to this oddity, I just cannot figure it out.

Committee Hearings – Week of 07-28-19

With just the Senate in session (the House already having started their summer recess) the committee hearing list is pretty short this week. We do have two hearings of interest to look at. The first is a markup hearing looking at two authorization bills that were introduced last week and the second is re-look at positive train control implementation.

Authorization Markups

On Wednesday the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will markup two bills:

• S 2297, Coast Guard Reauthorization Act of 2019; and

• S 2299, Protecting Our Infrastructure of Pipelines Enhancing Safety (PIPES) Act of 2019

Neither bill has yet been officially published; the links above are to committee prints. A quick review of S 2297 shows that it includes a similar change to the MTSA rules found in the House version of the bill (HR 3409) requiring DHS to approve updates to security plans. HR 3409 was passed in the House last week.

PTC Hearing

On Wednesday the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on “Next Steps for Positive Train Control Implementation”. The witness list includes:

• Ronald Batory, Federal Railroad Administration;

• Robert Bourg, Wabtec Corporation;

• Jim Derwinski, Metra;

• Susan Fleming, Government Accountability Office; and

• Chris Matthews, BNSF Railway

HR 3409 Introduced – FY 2020 CG Authorization

Last month, Rep. DeFazio (D,OR) introduced HR 3409, the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2019. The bill contains one cybersecurity provision and one emergency response provision. The bill is currently scheduled to be considered in the House this week.

Cybersecurity

Section 414 of the bill would require the CG to expand its current Insider Threat Program to include monitoring of “all Coast Guard devices, including mobile devices”. No definition of terms ‘devices’ or ‘monitoring’ is provided.

Emergency Response

Section 309 of the bill would modify two separate sections of 46 USC:

§70107, security plan implementation grants; and

§70132, Credentialing standards, training, and certification for State and local support for the enforcement of security zones for the transportation of especially hazardous cargo

In both sections the term ‘emergency response providers’ would be substituted for the existing term ‘law enforcement personnel’ or ‘law enforcement agency personnel’ where they are used in those sections. The definition of ‘emergency response providers’ is taken from 6 USC 101(6) and still includes ‘law enforcement’ personnel.

Moving Forward

DeFazio is the Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. That Committee has already amended and adopted the bill in a hearing last month, though the record of which amendments were adopted and the final committee action on the bill is missing from the Committees hearing page.

One of the amendments that was to have been considered (and apparently was, see below) was offered by Rep. Garamendi (D,CA) concerned the application process for the Transportation Workers Identification Credential (TWIC). It would require the CG to establish a pilot program where personnel applying for a merchant mariner credential could jointly apply for a TWIC.

The Committee Report has not yet been published, nor has the amended version of the bill. I suspect that we will see both later today as this bill is supposed to be considered tomorrow under the suspension of the rules process. That would limit debate and require a supermajority for passage. The fact that the leadership is scheduling the bill under this process generally means that they expect the bill to receive substantial bipartisan support.

It is a tad bit unusual for the bill to be considered without the official publication of the reported version of the bill, but the House is trying to get a lot of ‘routine’ measures taken care of before the adjourn for their summer recess at the end of the week. The Majority Leader has provided a link to a revised version of the bill on the current Weekly Leader page; presumably this is the version being reported by the Committee, though it looks like there are additional changes. That may be misleading because of the incompleteness of the Committee’s markup hearing page.

Revised Bill

The two original provisions discussed above remain in the revised bill as does the Garamendi amendment (now §429). Two of the newly added provision need to be addressed here, one is an additional cybersecurity provision and a change to the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) program.

The cybersecurity provision in §422 would establish a “a rotational research, development, and training program” {new §846(1)} within DHS that would allow Coast Guard Academy graduates and faculty to be detailed to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and allow cybersecurity personnel from DHS to be detailed to the CG Academy.

The MTSA provision is found in a relatively short §317. It would amend 46 USC 70103(b)(3), Maritime Transportation Security Plans. It would require the Secretary to review and approve updates to Area Maritime Transportation Security Plans where the current section only requires review and approval of the original plan. A similar requirement is also put into place for extending the current review and approval of Vessel and Facility Security Plans requirements under §70103(c)(4) to include the updates for those plans.