Remarks of Bruce A. Lockwood CEM Chair of the Government Affairs - - PDF document

Remarks of Bruce A. Lockwood CEM Chair of the Government Affairs Committee USA Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers Legislative Committee Meeting National Emergency Management Association-Mid Year Forum Alexandria, Virginia March 16, 2015 Good morning. My name is Bruce Lockwood, and I am the local government emergency manager in East Hartford, Connecticut. I also serve as the U.S. Government Affairs Chair of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM-USA), and it is in that role that I am responding to Chairman Gianato and Vice-Chair Madden’s invitation to appear before you this morning. I want to extend my thanks to Jimmy and John for their partnership and the partnership of the entire NEMA Legislative Committee. In addition, I would like to thank NEMA legislative staff – Matt Cowles and Rachel Mouser – and commend them on their close work with IAEM Policy Advisor Martha Braddock. We wish Matt great success in his new position. I would like to recognize our IAEM USA President, John “Rusty” Russell, the Director for Huntsville-Madison County Emergency Management, Alabama. He has asked me to extend his appreciation to NEMA President Bryan Koon for his collaboration and open lines of communication. Our 63rd annual conference will take place November 13 – 18, 2015, in Clark County, Nevada. We hope that you, as State Directors, will encourage your local emergency management personnel to join nearly 2,500 of their peers at our extremely substantive annual meeting with more than 200 emergency management related presentations. These presentations are tailored to

• ur membership – consisting of local and state government emergency managers, university and

college emergency managers, academics, students, Native American tribal emergency managers, hospital emergency managers, private non profit emergency managers and others. IAEM-USA and NEMA continue to cooperate on several joint projects. We are in the process of completing work on the Emergency Management Performance Grant Return on Investment report for the fourth year with our colleagues at NEMA. IAEM surveyed the local government emergency managers, and NEMA surveyed the states, and we will be preparing a joint report. Even with numerous events impacting emergency managers across the country, 1159 locals completed the survey. We would like to particularly congratulate Mississippi – 100% of the EMPG sub-grantees completed the survey. The IAEM-NEMA Joint Taskforce on Inclusive Planning has been working together to promote inclusive emergency management, and in particular, how to best ensure that all aspects of planning, response, recovery and mitigation account for people with disabilities and others with access and functional needs. The goal of the task force was to develop a toolkit for local and state emergency managers to best provide services for those with disabilities and functional

• needs. The joint task force is a high level group made up of emergency management

professionals, elected or appointed officials in the field, and subject matter experts particularly from jurisdictions who have been involved in ADA litigation on the emergency management systems and plans. The joint task force will sunset on April 30, 2015. We want to thank those involved for their dedication and work on this project. Shortly after leaving your annual meeting in Atlanta, NEMA President Bryan Koon reached out to IAEM proposing a webinar specific to emergency management lessons learned from the Ebola response in Dallas County, Texas. Working together, we successfully presented a webinar on October 30 that exceeded our 999 available registrations. In fact, we had 800 register in the first 24 hours. NEMA and IAEM participate in a number of coalitions and work groups. One of them is a very broad group called the Stafford Act coalition. Since the staff of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Public Buildings, Economic Development and Emergency Management were not able to be here today, I would like to share some information that Rachel and Martha were briefed on last week. A bill is expected to be introduced in the next two weeks which will address among other issues administrative costs, de-obligation, and hazard mitigation grants for fire management assistance. In addition, we are following their effort to drive a larger discussion on disaster costs. On Wednesday morning they will hold the first in a series of round

• tables. The main purpose of this round table is to look at disaster data collected, including

insured and uninsured losses, and federal disaster assistance beyond FEMA. Frequently round tables are much more productive and interesting than hearings. I would like to focus on several other congressional issues: First and foremost we are grateful for the President’s requested amount of $350 million for Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) funding in his FY 2016 budget. In addition, we appreciate the fact that the administrative costs of FEMA for running this program will not be coming from the requested funding, allowing the entire amount to be available for

• distribution. The FY 2016 budget again proposes to move EMPG and Fire Fighter Assistance

under a “First Responder Assistance Program” located in the State and Local Programs account. Congress rejected this proposal last year and we will urge them to reject it again. It is vital that EMPG remains a separate account due to its fundamentally different nature from all the other FEMA preparedness grants. We are encouraging members of the House of Representatives to include EMPG funding in their FY 2016 appropriations priority letters to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, which are due by March 26, 2015. We urge Members of the Senate to include EMPG funding in their FY 2016 appropriations priority letters to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security which are due by April 24, 2015. It is important that we emphasize that EMPG is not an ear mark. With so many new members of Congress as well as changes in key committee chairs and ranking members and new staff, it is very important that state and locals increase their efforts to provide information on what emergency managers actually do, and why it matters.

Now that DHS has full year funding, we understand the grant guidance will be going out shortly and we particularly look forward to seeing the EMPG language. We would especially like to pass along our thanks to those states that have emphasized building capabilities at the local emergency management level – where all disasters begin and end. We continue to urge transparency for the process of awarding EMPG to sub-grantees. Ideally, we would like to see each State provide a publicly available list of the EMPG sub-grantees along with the amount of funding passed through to them, on an annual basis. We thank those states who provide this information routinely. Another priority of IAEM has been to focus Congressional attention on the Emergency Management Institute. We have been pushing for the last seven years to increase the funding for

• EMI. We have encouraged Congress to require FEMA to include a specific line item for EMI in

their budget and urged Congress to include a specific funding amount in the Congressional appropriations reports. We were pleased that FEMA included a specific budget number in the request for FY 2016. Congress appropriated $20.569 million in FY 2014 and 2015: however, the FEMA request for FY 2016 is only $19.522 million-- over a million less than what Congress appropriated in FY 2014 and FY 2015. This number should be increasing not declining. We support adding $1 million for a total of $21.569 million. We are especially pleased with the development of the National Emergency Management Basic Academy, the National Emergency Management Advanced Academy, and the National Emergency Management Executive

• Academy. These Academies are the new foundation of emergency management training, yet
• nly one seat is available for every three applicants to the Advanced Academy. The additional

funding would increase access to the Advanced Academy through field deliveries, allow additional offerings of the highly demanded Master Exercise Practitioner program, and support significant strides in much needed course review and update for key courses, including the popular Integrated Emergency Management Course. IAEM-USA supports the $200 million for the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Program included in the President’s budget. The National Weather Service continues to be a priority for IAEM-USA and we believe there needs to be adequate funding for them to avoid any decrease in service in support of state, local, and tribal emergency managers at their local NWS offices. We as emergency managers depend

• n timely and accurate advice regarding the impact of weather and related emergencies on our
• communities. We hope our NEMA colleagues will join us in this strong support for the National

Weather Service. For the fourth time, FEMA has proposed consolidating the 16 homeland security grants into the National Preparedness Grant Program (NPGP). Congress rejected the proposal in FY 2013, FY 2014 and FY 2015. As of now legislative language for this year’s proposal has not been submitted to Congress. We will have further comments when that language is available. We believe that any change should not be done through the appropriations process, but through careful consideration by the authorizing committees. It is our position that any consolidation proposal should be reviewed with the key stakeholders to make sure that any concerns are addressed and that the proposed grant consolidation would not be detrimental to the level of preparedness already achieved under the 16 homeland security grant programs. We are not aware

• f any evidence or studies to support that combining the grants would result in greater

efficiencies or improved preparedness. IAEM has continued to grow our member’s benefits. Over the last year we established a webinar program for our committees and caucuses to present timely and current information to our

• members. Since last year our working groups have grown to include Climate Change and

Weather, Disaster Behavioral Health, Utilities Emergency Managers, and Disaster Cost Recovery and Finance. At our 2014 annual conference in San Antonio, we announced that IAEM has assumed the Think Tank program and longtime IAEM member Rich Serino will facilitate Think Tank webinars

• quarterly. The inaugural IAEM Think Tank was held on February 18, 2015 from Fort Collins,

Colorado, focused on the 2013 Colorado floods. Details on the next Think Tank will be released

• shortly. We are using #iaemthinktank on Twitter, not only during the webinar, but also to collect

suggestions for future Think Tank topics. Think Tank webinars are open and accessible to anyone. I’d like to close my remarks by emphasizing that IAEM-USA and NEMA are natural allies. I will be happy to answer any questions you might have.