Allowing Funding For The Interoperable Emergency Communications Grant Program

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of legislation, S. 1694, offered by Ms. HARMAN. This bipartisan bill is critical to promoting interoperable emergency communications capabilities for the Nation's first responders. This important piece of legislation provides our Nation's first line of defense with the tools and equipment necessary to carry out their life-saving responsibilities.

As Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, it remains unsettling that most of the public safety communications failures uncovered during the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 still exist today. Those tragic events will forever be engrained in the minds of every American. We learned a shrilling lesson from those major incidents: that when our Nation's first responders cannot communicate during a manmade or natural disaster, lives are lost.

Today, we have the opportunity to act with what Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. coined as, ``the fierce urgency of now.'' Interoperable communications--the ability of emergency responders to communicate in real-time, when needed, and as authorized--remains an unaccomplished goal. Therefore, we must commit to the American people that we will do our due diligence and address the daily challenges--both human and technological--that first responders face with interoperable emergency communications post-haste.

I would like to applaud Ms. HARMAN for her leadership in the effort to bring our nation's first responders one step closer to achieving interoperable communications by closing a loophole in the Public Safety Interoperable Communications, PSIC, grant program.

Specifically, S. 1694, which is a companion bill to H.R. 3633, appropriately extends next year's statutory deadline to spend PSIC grant funds to September 30, 2012. The PSIC program is an important grant program for the public safety community and has provided nearly $1 billion of funding to state and local to purchase equipment, deploy new communications systems, and train personnel.

As a condition to receive grants under the PSIC program, states and local governments must develop Statewide Communications Interoperability Plans, SCIPs. The Department of Homeland Security faced delays in approving the SCIPs, creating the challenge for state and local grantees to spend the grant funds by the end of next year.

S. 1694 makes an important change and gives grantees the much needed time and flexibility to do their due diligence and avoid wasteful spending. This bipartisan bill allows for state and local governments to properly invest in public safety communications systems that will achieve the goal of implementing nationwide interoperability.

I support S. 1694 and urge my colleagues to join me in this supporting our Nation's first responders.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source