By Calvin Biesecker
The House Homeland Security Committee yesterday unanimously approved several bipartisan bills including one aimed at improving the nation’s preparedness and response to threats from biological weapons and another that would loosen some of the spending restrictions on how states and localities can spend their homeland security grant funds.
Another bill that was approved would re-establish within the Department of Homeland Security a Chief Veterinarian Officer that would have primary responsibility for veterinary medicine and veterinary public health.
The WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2010 (H.R. 5498), which was introduced earlier this month by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the committee and Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), responds to concerns of the WMD Commission that the most likely weapon of mass destruction (WMD) threat facing the nation is a biological attack. That report, World at Risk, and a subsequent report by the commission, predicts that such an attack will occur by 2013 and that little has been done to prepare for such an event (Defense Daily, Dec. 4, 2008 and Jan. 27, 2010).
“Under this bill, we will for the first time direct the federal government to focus its resources and capabilities in a coordinated manner to address the WMD threat,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the committee. “Moreover, H.R. 5498 puts in place programs to effectively partner with the private sector, especially the laboratory community, to address one of the most vexing homeland security challenges, the bioterrorism threat.”
On the prevention and deterrence front, the WMD bill includes provisions on including stakeholders in bio-security into the homeland security intelligence process, produce biennial bioterrorism risk assessments, and identify the labs and locations in the United States where high-level material threat agents are present. The bill also requires threat alerts to be shared with state, local and tribal authorities and for DHS to share best practices and conduct outreach with individuals and communities for WMD prevention and preparedness.
The bill also has sections on detection, attribution, response and recovery, and directs the DHS Science and Technology Directorate to assess whether it should develop screening capabilities for “biological WMD agents, pandemic influenza, and other infectious diseases for entry and exit screening at ports of entry.”
The committee also took the opportunity to tweak the homeland security grant program to give states and localities more leeway in how funds are spent. The Homeland Security Grant Management Improvement Act (H.R. 5562) “would prohibit FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) from deciding unilaterally to require states and local governments to spend a specific percentage of their homeland security grant on one activity,” said Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Calif.), the bill’s sponsor.
For example, currently localities are prevented from spending more than a certain percentage of their grants on administrative costs yet those actual costs vary from area to area.
“From our nation’s ports to our border crossing and population centers, the needs of the local agencies that support our homeland security can be vastly different, like California compared to Texas, and this legislation will allow states and local governments to best meet their needs,” Richardson said.
Richardson’s bill also requires FEMA to study the feasibility of multi-year grant guidance to evaluate whether state and local governments have the resources to manage their grants.
The Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) bill is in response to a decision by DHS to eliminate this position and assign the duties to the director of Food, Agriculture, and Veterinarian Defense Division within the Office of Health Affairs. Since the DHS assistant secretary of Health Affairs has responsibility for all medical and public health issues, including veterinary, the department eliminated the CVO position to reduce confusion and streamline its organization.
However, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), one of the sponsors of the bill (H.R. 5105), said that eliminating the CVO position shows “a lack of fundamental understanding on the part of DHS’ leadership as to the importance of this agricultural threat and the nexus between animal and human health.” Rogers also said that eliminating the position “could negatively impact the department’s credibility on issues related to agro-terrorism and food security.”