Senate Vote on Public Safety Bill Tough But Possible Before Sept. 11
PHILADELPHIA -- Hope remains that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., will manage to bring his version of public safety legislation to the Senate floor after the body returns to Washington Sept. 6 and before the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. That’s according to public safety officials at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials’ annual meeting, which got underway over the weekend. Hill officials who spoke Monday held out some hope that legislation could move in the few days Congress meets before Sept. 11.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
One public safety official predicted that Rockefeller’s bill, S-911, will be approved in the Senate before the anniversary, providing some momentum for action in the House later this year or early in 2012. A second public official said the Senate could act if the bill is “hotlined” and brought to the floor for a vote without objections or could be moved with minimal floor time.
John Branscome, majority Senate Commerce Committee counsel, blamed House Republican leadership for using “every trick in the book” for pulling public safety provisions out of debt ceiling legislation, approved by Congress last week (CD Aug 2 p1). He conceded getting final approval for a standalone bill will be “very tough,” especially in the few legislative days remaining before Sept. 11. “I'll be honest, it is a tough time in the Senate to do anything,” he said. “We tried to do a routine, pro forma, extension of the Federal Aviation Administration and even that became difficult. So it’s not going to be easy.”
Rockefeller and ranking committee member Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, both are strong proponents of S-911, Branscome said. “They have worked together every step of the way on this bill,” he said. “This is a true bipartisan bill.” He called the committee’s approval of the bill in June by a 21-4 vote “a very good sign.” Branscome encouraged APCO members to lobby their representatives and senators this month during the current break. “Find out when their townhall meetings are,” he said. “Show up. Talk about this issue. It is much more effective to talk those members of Congress when they're home than in the cacophony and chaos that’s Washington.”
"We are having good faith and productive negotiations with the Republican staff,” said Jeff Cohen, a Democratic staffer on the House Commerce Committee. “While we are not discussing the D-block, we are talking about governance, and governance is key.”
The House also could act on legislation Peter King, R-N.Y., introduced there, said Ed Parkinson, a Republican staffer to the House Homeland Security Committee. Parkinson noted there are only a few days between when the House returns and the Sept. 11 anniversary. “We have 45 members signed on to HR-607,” said Parkinson, whose boss is King. “The chairman has expressed a willingness to work with any and all who want to see the reallocation of the D-block, to provide funding and to provide a sensible and strong governance approach.” There’s been a “big push” already for the legislation and “we're certainly not giving up,” he said. The cost of a national public safety broadband network is the toughest issues that Congress will need to work through, Parkinson said. “It’s going to be very, very difficult in the House of Representatives to get a big spending bill through."
Branscome said he’s had to field many questions about costs and how much money has been spent for legacy systems. He noted that the costs of the network would be completely supported by incentive auctions with money left over for deficit reduction. Chris Essid, director of the Office of Emergency Communications in the Department of Homeland Security, noted in a second panel at APCO that $100 million has already spent on public safety communications. Essid said the 700 MHz spectrum will be critical but will support systems already in place for public safety. “You don’t start over,” he said. “This is another tool in the tool box for public safety to use for communications. We're not going to throw out all the investments we've made. You have to figure out how to leverage everything that we've done."
"Over the last year and a half we've really started to lay the groundwork that would allow public safety to make the best use of the public safety 700 MHz spectrum,” said Dereck Orr, program manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Nobody in this room should assume that there is a fleshed out, clear understanding of public safety’s requirements across the spectrum for public safety broadband. One of the key needs is going to be to ensure that those requirements are well defined and in a manner that industry can utilize when developing products and standards."
Standards are critical, Orr said. The broadband world is “unbelievably different” than the Project 25 (P25) world public safety is used to, he said. “This is an international community made up of thousands” of players, he said. “When you go to a standards meeting in broadband, it has 24 concurrent sessions,” he said. “When you go to P25 [meetings], it’s one session all week long with about 100 people in the room. This is a completely different environment.” Public safety will have to be very focused as LTE rolls out to make sure standards meet its needs, Orr said. “LTE was not developed for public safety,” he said. “It was developed for commercial use.”