Review – DHS Congressional Oversight

As I noted yesterday, the House Homeland Security Committee are holding a hearing this afternoon looking their oversight plan for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS covers a wide range of activities, but thee of are particular interest here, chemical security, cybersecurity, and surface transportation security. All are covered in the Oversight Plan draft published by the Committee.

The chemical security portion of the Plan includes (pg 9):

“An act to extend the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Program of the Department of Homeland Security, and for other purposes, (Pub. L. 116-150), conveys CFATS statutory authority until July 27, 2023, at which point the Committee will rely on these oversight activities and findings to consider improvements or modifications to the CFATS program which can be achieved through reauthorization.”

The wide-ranging cybersecurity discussion includes an interesting congressional initiative (pg 8):

“The Committee will lead quarterly meetings of relevant House Committees to conduct oversight, coordinate, and recommend changes to facilitate a whole of government approach to cybersecurity.”

The surface transportation provisions include (pg 15):

“The Committee will also review the extent to which TSA effectively coordinates with its federal, state, local, and private sector partners to secure the Nation’s transportation systems and to help prevent conflicting or unnecessarily redundant regulations. Finally, the Committee will assess the effectiveness of TSA’s efforts to secure the Nation’s pipeline systems through TSA’s oversight and inspection activities.”

Commentary

With just under five-months left until the current CFATS authorization runs out, there is not much time for oversight hearings, formulating reauthorization legislation and passing it through the legislative process before July 27^th. Compounding the problem is that the Committee shares oversight of the CFATS program with the Energy and Commerce Committee. Thus, legislation needs to be coordinated before it can come to the floor of the House. The Republican leadership of the ECC is concentrating on energy matters and will have little time for CFATS oversight, this will complicate the reauthorization process.

I suspect that these problems will require Congress to kick the problem down the road by authorizing a short-term (one to two years) extension of the program. CISA would probably push to see that such an extension would include specific authorization for the ChemLock program to avoid funding problems.

 

For more details about the Oversight Plan, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/dhs-congressional-oversight - subscription required.

Committee Hearings – Week of 07-12-15

Both the House and Senate will be working in Washington this week. There is lots of different stuff on the agenda as the summer recess approaches. Hearing of specific interest to readers of this blog will include:

∙ Homeland Security spending bill markup;

∙ Oversight hearings on DHS and PHMSA;

∙ WMD control;

∙ CSB nomination; and

∙ S 1732 markup.

DHS Spending

The House Appropriations Committee will be marking up the FY 2015 DHS spending bill on Tuesday. A copy of the bill approved last week by their Homeland Security Subcommittee is available as is a copy of the draft report for the bill. This bill will almost certainly be introduced later this week.

DHS Oversight

The House Judiciary Committee will be holding an oversight hearing on Tuesday. The only witness will be Secretary Johnson. I doubt that there will be much mention of chemical security or surface transportation security at this hearing, but you never can tell.

PHMSA Oversight

The Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be holding an oversight hearing on the Pipeline Safety, Regulatory Certainty, and Job Creation Act of 2011 and related issues on Tuesday. Some of the witness testimony is already available. The witness list includes

∙ Dianne Black, County of Santa Barbara, California;

∙ Ron Bradley, PECO Energy;

∙ Stacy Cummings, Interim Executive Director, PHMSA;

∙ Donald Santa, Interstate Natural Gas Association of America;

∙ Carl Weimer, Pipeline Safety Trust; and

∙ Stan Wise, Georgia Public Service Commission

There have been some congressional complaints about how quickly PHMSA has been implementing the requirements of the 2011 bill. Expect to see some adversarial questioning of the relatively new Interim Executive Director.

WMD Hearing

There will be a joint hearing by two subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday on “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Bolstering DHS to Combat Persistent Threats to America”. The current witness list includes DHS representatives from Office of Health Affairs, S&T and the Nuclear Detection Office. There are two non-governmental witnesses:

∙ Alan D. Cohn, Steptoe & Johnson, LLP; and

∙ Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, Center for Strategic and International Studies

According to the Committee website the hearing “will review the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) proposal to consolidate certain weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and explosives defense activities at DHS headquarters to ensure America is prepared to combat these threats.”

CSB Nomination

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will be holding a nomination hearing on Wednesday. Of the two nominees being considered readers of this blog will probably be most interested in Kristen Kulinowski to be a Member of the Chemical Safety Board. Kulinowski is a chemist with expertise in nanomaterial safety.

S 1732 Markup

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee will be holding a markup hearing on S 1732, the Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015, on Wednesday. This bill was introduced on Friday and the bill has not yet been published by the GPO but the Committee does have a committee print available. A quick look at the table of contents indicates that there may be numerous provisions of interest to readers of this blog; expect a review from me before Wednesday’s hearing.

Committee Hearings – Week of 2-22-15

The House and Senate will both be back in town this week after spending some time in their districts. There will be a number of budget hearings, but only one of specific interest to readers of this blog; the Coast Guard budget. Cybersecurity will be an additional topic this week as will DHS performance and domestic terrorism.

Coast Guard Budget

The House Transportation Committee’s Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation will be holding a hearing on Wednesday to look at the President’s budget proposal for Coast Guard spending in FY 2016. This will almost certainly be a ‘high-level’ review with little probability of chemical safety or security being mentioned, much less discussed in any detail.

Cybersecurity Information Sharing

On Wednesday the House Homeland Security Committee will be holding a hearing on “Examining the President’s Cybersecurity Information Sharing Proposal." Administration witness from DHS will be heard and there will be a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Watch the questioning at this hearing to see how close the two sides are achieving a consensus on the information sharing issue. Pay careful attention to see if Congress may take a wait and see response to the President’s actions as a way to avoid action on legislation this year.

DHS Oversight

The House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency will be holding a hearing on Thursday looking at “Assessing DHS’s Performance: Watchdog Recommendations to Improve Homeland Security.” No witness list has been published, but I suspect that it will be academics and think tanks.

There is a slight chance that the pending changes to the CFATS program will be mentioned, but, if it is, there won’t be many details discussed.

Domestic Terror Threat

Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations of the House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on Thursday looking at “ISIL in America: Domestic Terror and Radicalization.” There is no witness list currently available.

There might be a passing mention of cybersecurity, but almost certainly nothing about chemical security.

On The Floor

The 800 lb gorilla this week is the Friday deadline to pass the FY 2015 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The House passed HR 240 last month, but the Senate has not been able to overcome Democratic opposition to the immigration riders to actually be able to start debate on the measure. At least one more attempt will be made to get cloture on this bill this week.

There is an interesting indication that the House expects to see a revised version of HR 240 come back to the House for a vote this week. The Majority Leader’s web page mentions ‘possible consideration of HR 240’ later in the week. If the Senate can’t bring the bill to the floor in that body this week, there may be a short term continuing resolution coming out of the House.

There is always the possibility, however, that both sides will expect the other side to get the blame for a shutdown and thus let the whole matter slide past Friday. Most of DHS will continue working for ‘national security’ reasons, though it will be ‘without pay’ (back-pay for those that had to work would probably be included in the final bill that does eventually get worked out). The CFATS program would not, however, be covered under that provision.  Chemical security inspectors would not get paid, but they could spend the time with their families.