Four Months since the 1 Month CFATS Promise

Yesterday saw the passing of the four month anniversary of Under Secretary Beers’ promise to Congress that ISCD would publish a new personnel surety program information collection request (ICR) in the Federal register within 30 days of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing. We are still waiting for the publication of this program which would allow high-risk chemical facilities to vet their employees against the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

The 113^th Congress is now in session. One of the things that is certainly going to come up in the opening months of this Congress is the continued funding of the CFATS program. The House Appropriations Committee made it clear last year that they intended to drastically cut the funding for this program. One of the reasons given was the inability to meet program milestones; this personnel surety failure further feeds that complaint. A funding bill will need to be approved before March 27^th when the interim FY 2013 bill expires. And the 2014 budget process will begin shortly thereafter.

In the coming weeks we will certainly expect members of the House and Senate to begin to introduce their comprehensive chemical security bills that can be expected to address the continuation of the CFATS program. This year, for the first time, I fully expect to see a bill introduced to cancel the program. It is unlikely to pass, but failures of ISCD to move the program forward in a timely manner will be the impetus for the introduction of the bill.

Beers, who many expect to be on the short list to replace Secretary Napolitano, needs to get his house in order. The personnel issues that periodically raise their ugly head here and in other publications must be resolved. And the CFATS program needs to start moving forward with their oft delayed, and very slow site security plan (SSP) approval process. And the personnel surety program that must be an integral part of those SSP’s must be put into place.

No Hearings on ISCD Issues – Really?

Alexis Rudakewych, the Government Relations Manager at SOCMA has an interesting guest-blog post over at ChemicalProcessing.com that addresses the problems with the CFATS implementation that were made public a couple weeks back in a FoxNews.com article. In the posting she makes the very predictable (and in very many ways legitimate) argument that the current issues provide further argument for providing the CFATS program with a long term extension of the current authorization without substantial modification. Her arguments are well reasoned and certainly worth reading.

She makes one comment though, that I must take exception to. She states that:

“This news could easily derail the advancement of any of the three pending CFATS bills in the House and Senate, all of which have already been approved by their respective committees, and instead redirect Congress's attention to oversight hearings on the program in lieu of a multi-year authorization.”

While the CFATS program is small potatoes in the great scheme of the federal government (so small that it isn’t even a line item in the budget) it is an important part of defending the United States against potentially serious terrorist attacks. It is arguably the single most important program defending against the terrorist use of WMD against the homeland.

We now have a situation that has developed over the last couple of years where the implementation of that program has virtually stalled because of apparent management issues. I say apparent because it appears that no one, including Alexis, has seen a copy of this internal DHS report. For Congress to continue funding this program without a serious and public look at these management issues (and the Department’s plan for resolving them) would be political malfeasance of the highest order.

Industry has spent a great deal of time, money and other resources preparing for the site security plan approval process. They are almost certainly going to have to spend even more before the process is complete. I would think that industry would want more than just the unsupported assurances of the NPPD management, the same management that apparently failed miserably in its oversight of the program in the first place, that the problems were being fixed.

If industry really wants to have long-term authorization of this program pass, they should be demanding an immediate hearing (maybe even a joint hearing) on this issue in the very near future along with a public reporting of the internal investigation. Hearings should go beyond the routine appearance of Undersecretary Bears and Director Anderson. It should include the full management team of ISCD, union reps (as the unions were apparently blamed for being part of the problems) and at least one regional commander of the chemical facility inspectors. It might not be a bad idea to also include some of the original management of ISCD to see if the current problems actually had their roots in the initial design of the program.

CFATS is too valuable a program to let it die from lack of attention. If something isn’t done soon to correct these problems industry is going to reduce its support for the CFATS program. Money budgeted for security spending will be cut back so that it can be applied to money making efforts that improve their bottom lines.

I have long maintained that the failure of both sides to come to a reasonable compromise on the IST issue has doomed this program to a year-by-year reauthorization standard. This problem is going to make it more difficult to get the necessary support necessary for the long-term reauthorization process to be completed. Failing to publicly deal with the problem will make it impossible.