HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE APPROVES SENATORS COLLINS, LIEBERMAN LEGISLATION TO IMPLEMENT FINDINGS OF THE HURRICANE KATRINA REPORT
Washington, D.C. – The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has approved legislation authored by Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ranking Member Joe Lieberman (D-CT) that would reform the nation’s emergency management system to enable it to better prepare for and respond to a disaster. Entitled the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, the bill would implement many of the findings of the Committee's Hurricane Katrina report, including reconstituting FEMA, improving emergency staffing, enhancing planning and preparedness, facilitating better communication and interoperability capabilities among emergency responders, and reducing waste, fraud, and abuse.
The bill addresses shortcomings in each of the vital preparation and response areas determined by the Committee’s eight-month investigation into Hurricane Katrina as necessitating congressional action. While some of the 88 recommendations that flowed from this investigation can be adopted by administrative action, the Post- Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act comprises important steps that only Congress can take.
"Hurricane Katrina showed us in tragic terms that we need a new way to conduct disaster mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery efforts. If we do not reform flaws revealed during Katrina, we will see more unnecessary human suffering and destruction of communities. Our bill puts forth a careful and comprehensive program for improvement of our emergency management system. This is no academic exercise; it is a concrete, nuts and bolts plan designed to rebuild and strengthen a broken system," said Senator Collins.
LIEBERMAN QUOTE
The bill also strengthens FEMA and elevates it within DHS, restoring its preparedness authority and protecting it from departmental reorganizations that could erode its budget and assets. The Senate has already adopted this major element of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act. On July 11, Senators Collins and Lieberman offered an amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2007 to keep FEMA an independent agency within the Department of Homeland Security, similar to the Coast Guard. The measure was approved by the full Senate by a vote of 87-11.
Key components of the legislation include:
- Improves communication and coordination among federal, state, and local agencies by strengthening the current 10-region structure of FEMA by providing for standing, multi-agency federal strike teams that will be ready to act and deploy in a region they will already know and understand before a disaster occurs.
- Improves the agency’s communications, both organizationally and technically, by designating the Administrator of the FEMA as the principal advisor to the President on emergency-management issues. The bill consolidates several communications programs within a new Office of Emergency Communications within FEMA, which will devise a national emergency-communications strategy, coordinate grants for interoperable communications, and regularly assess the operability and interoperability of the communication systems that are essential for disaster response.
- Directs the federal government to develop and maintain a national disaster-recovery strategy in coordination with the state and local governments, enhancing its emergency management role.
- Provides more and better-trained emergency professionals, and creates a National Homeland Security Academy that will offer both classroom and distance-learning instruction and training to DHS, state, and local homeland-security professionals.
- Implements a variety of measures to reduce the waste, fraud, and abuse. The bill directs DHS to identify emergency-response requirements that can be contracted in advance with pre-screened vendors, so that vital commodities and services can be secured and delivered promptly. The bill also imposes civil and criminal penalties for misrepresentation of assistance needs.
