 Good morning, and thank you for being here this morning. I think we'll go ahead and get started at Right on the dot on behalf of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, I am Delighted to welcome you here today For this briefing on the prepare act preparing for extreme weather saving lives and taxpayer money We have a great panel to look at this issue, which is And there are of course lots of issues around resiliency and emergency preparedness And today we are really looking at our nation's ability to prepare for and respond to the impacts of extreme weather especially in terms of Fiscal Responsibility and preparedness Of course the most most recent example of Disaster and a an emergency declaration was in South Carolina and as you probably know, it's the Stafford Act that provides the authority for federal disaster relief Public law in 93 to 88 amended And The states need to officially request The president to declare A disaster so the governor needs to to do this I think you will probably hear that we have seen many such declarations This year alone and of course over the last several years So we are we are facing Many emergencies and also Funding emergencies from from extreme weather We will hear today from Joe Thompson at the government accountability office GAO About this serious risk to the federal government Put simply Business as usual is no longer sustainable We will we will also hear from Andrew Moylin of our street Further about some of these The dangers the and the the risks to the federal government and to taxpayers And we'll hear from Daniel Green in the middle Who is with congressman Matt Cartwright from Pennsylvania who introduced the prepare act Largely in response to a GAO report that They call the high risk list that that Joe will will discuss So I am delighted to first Welcome and introduce our first speaker Joe Thompson who is The assistant director of natural resources and environment at GAO Joe has a master of public affairs from the University of Wisconsin Madison and a bachelor of science from the University of Michigan School of natural resources and environment. I Will let him tell you about the high risk list and his role at GAO But I would also like to mention that he he does have a background also in state and local government working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources while in graduate school and Also serving as Ward 1 council member for the town of University Park, Maryland since 2014 So it is my pleasure to introduce Joe Thompson well, good morning and Thank you all for being here, and I'm Joe Thompson with the government accountability office And the GAO of course is the non-partisan watchdog of the federal federal government so we primarily care about taxpayers and fiscal exposure to financial risk from extreme weather events and one way that we have our work requested is through you know congressional requests like Congressman Cartwright's office and Also mandates through different laws that are passed requiring GAO work but one way that we identify particular issues of concern is through with our key issues pages which are sort of Ways that we group information on our website and also through our high risk list. So we have several issues on our high risk list that relate to fiscal exposure to extreme weather specifically changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and also climate-related issues like sea level rise and sort of the slow observed and projected increase of temperatures and GAO has again has a very particular way of looking at this issue We care about fiscal exposure to taxpayers and we have five main lenses that we view that fiscal exposure through the first is whether the federal government has a strategic plan to deal with Observed and projected changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. So What are we trying to do? Who's going to do it? How are we going to pay for it? How are we going to evaluate it? Now there's been a lot of progress in that area recently with you know the adaptation plans and various other executive orders But as a whole the federal government is still lacking in many Ways that GAO would evaluate a strategic plan. It's not clear to me What exactly we're trying to accomplish as a whole and how we're going to get there? So that's one area of work that we continue on at GAO The second is federal government as owner of buildings and lands So if you look at say the Department of Defense has over 500,000 facilities with $850 billion in replacement value We should really care about a lot about this because some of these facilities like maybe Navy bases are at sea level So we should start thinking long term about how we're going to make sure that these facilities are resilient to changes in extreme weather Also, we manage 650 million acres of land out west primarily So you talk about national parks, national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands And You can imagine NASA facilities one of a kind the wind tunnels all sorts of weird things we do in NASA facilities pretty interesting stuff I want to make sure that they're available to the American public going forward And GSA buildings mean we have hundreds of thousands of other facilities owned and managed by the federal government So there's a huge fiscal exposure to taxpayers that if we don't Consider the fact that the future is going to be different than the past. We're going to be stuck with a big bill the third lens that GAO uses as the federal government as insurer of crops and You know flood insurance, so I Think I don't know what the exact number is but the national flood insurance program Oh is the federal government at least 20 billion dollars right now The program is structurally unsound for a number of other reasons But climb, you know extreme weather events and climate related impacts make that fiscal exposure greater over time The fourth lens and this is really important and sort of a key role of the federal government moving forward is the provider of technical assistance to state local and private sector decision-makers So federal government provides billions of dollars every year to things like roads and bridges and all sorts of other things That are prioritized by state and local governments So decisions made by these actors affect the long-term fiscal exposure to the federal government So if we can help these actors make better decisions and make everything that the program pays for more resilient We can reduce federal fiscal exposure over time and that means tying in projected changes in extreme weather to the planning processes for all these different types of state and local activities now The fifth lens the GA uses is the provider of disaster assistance So you can imagine if we don't do a very good job managing facilities Our flood insurance program has problems. We don't provide disaster assistance very well. We don't do a good job with strategic planning the federal government's also the backstop as far as disaster assistance and we don't budget for disaster assistance so almost all the money we spend on that is borrowed and that gets to a key point here is that this is a systematic problem that everything that the federal government does is affected by changes in extreme weather in one way or another and we don't account for it in a very systematic way and I Kind of a simple way of thinking about this as a homeowner You can either control your future or you can be controlled by the future and I look at it Like I just bought a house not too long ago, right? So it had a very old heating and air conditioning system So one way to look at it is well, I can let it ride You know gives much out of as I can and let the thing break and then replace it, right? Unfortunately, that's a really bad idea because inevitably the system is going to break whether it's really hot or really cold outside It's going to be a whole bunch of other people trying to replace their systems at the same time I won't have any time to figure out how to actually do it, right? I won't have the right time to size it. I'm going to pay twice as much It would make much more sense for me to save up Decide what I want to do pick the right system and invest appropriately up front instead of waiting for the bad thing to happen So control your future or be controlled by the future That's what we're really talking about here And I think it's a it's a systems problem that is endemic to lots of things across the federal government and I'm happy that the GAO is actually taking a stab at trying to address many these issues We have lots of work underway that I can talk about in more detail later, but with that I'll turn it over to the next speaker Thank You Joe and Please Know that we will look forward to your questions at the end of the presentations Usually so that would be about 1130 and that'll that'll be very important to get your input as well That's right. We're doing well They are indeed I Neglected to introduce myself. I'm Ellen Vaughn with EESI and I Focus on our buildings program And so one of I wanted just to mention that there's a lot of good news in that there are so many Incredibly important initiatives underway very good practices best practices for building Resilient sustainable buildings not the least of which are building codes which should be adopted by every state So I I did want to mention that Today though as as as we're as we're saying this really is we're zeroing in on this fiscal exposure and I am delighted to now introduce Daniel Green who is Energy and Environment Legislative Fellow with Congressman Matt Cartwright from Pennsylvania And just to mention that As many of you realize this is a recess week and Mr. Cartwright is In his district and I wanted to give a shout out to Jeremy Marcus who Has been great to work with also on on staff The congressman is on the house serves on the house committee on oversight and government reform and also as a member of the house committee on natural resources so Daniel is Is helping out on on the prepare act among other issues Daniel is a senior public was a senior public affairs advisor at Warwick Group consultants prior to Coming on to this to mr. Cartwright staff And he worked with municipal and county clients He also developed and advocated for legislation to improve flood risk management practices and interagency coordination Daniel was also a senior consultant at Alden Street Consulting and he assisted the US Army Corps of Engineers in Developing a more efficient project delivery strategy alternative financing methods and public-private Partnership models for water resource projects. So obviously well qualified to talk about Preparing and what the prepare act can can deliver on some of those points that Joe raised So I'm very happy to introduce Daniel Green First good morning everyone and thank you all for attending. We really appreciate it And thank you Ellen and ESI for Facilitating this great briefing. We really appreciate it Congressman certainly does as well Congressman Cartwright has grave concerns about the nation's extreme weather resilience and preparedness as highlighted by the GAO's high-risk reports findings as Joe just alluded to the federal government is not adequately addressing the nation's extreme weather vulnerabilities Which substantially increases the federal government's financial risks and endangers the public our critical infrastructure in our precious environment as You all know extreme weather events threaten many economic and environmental systems including agriculture infrastructure ecosystems and human health and Present a significant financial risk to the federal government in the past four years alone. There were 253 presidential major disaster declarations 42 of these major disaster declarations caused 227 billion dollars of economic losses in 1286 fatalities of Course all of our districts are vulnerable to extreme weather events from the devastating Droughts in the Southwest to the hurricane prone Atlantic and Gulf Coast to the tornadoes in the heartland Into the catastrophic wildfires in the Northwest every representatives district faces extreme weather threats And even when your district is not directly impacted by an extreme weather event your constituents frequently pay for the disaster response and clean up Anyways, for example, the federal government provided about 60 billion dollars towards federal recovery efforts in the mid-Atlantic region Following Superstorm Sandy that money came from constituents in every single district the GAO highlighted a couple specific issues With the federal government's resilience and preparedness efforts First and foremost, there's not efficient sharing of information data and best practices amongst federal agencies There's not proper coordination amongst regional branches of the federal government to prepare for disaster and extreme weather events Some agencies simply aren't adequately incorporating resilience preparedness into their agency per planning processes So we must take every step necessary to curb the federal government's financial risk and protect the public Remember for every one dollar we spend on disaster preparedness and resilience the American taxpayer saves about four dollars in disaster recovery clean up and economic savings and of course we can prevent devastating tragedies that ruin the livelihoods of thousands of Americans each year if we plan better That's why Congressman Cartwright and Congressman Lance have reintroduced the bipartisan prepare act The prepare act will protect our nation's assets and citizens from the enormous risks risks posed by extreme weather events By increasing the government's disaster planning and preparedness at no cost to the taxpayer This bill has four key components First the prepare act codifies an interagency council Which will encourage federal agencies to share best practices and information on extreme weather and preparedness and resilience Second the prepare act creates an oversight and governance structure and a process that requires agencies to implement government-wide resilience preparedness and risk management priorities Third the prepare act directs federal government the federal government to work with local and state planners to identify regional issues facilitating the adoption of resilience preparedness and risk management best practices fourth the prepare act establishes a regional coordination plan to ensure Greater coordination among the many regional efforts Most importantly this bill does not cost a dime We are simply encouraging agencies to incorporate extreme weather and preparedness and resilience into their agency planning and project delivery processes We worked extensively with the GAO private sector experts and the administration to craft a very straightforward effective and frankly common-sense bill Also, we're very pleased to enjoy broad bipartisan support from both Republican and Democratic offices We're also happy to have 49 endorsing organizations including private companies Conservative think tanks the insurance industry and environmental organizations Of course, we have our friends from our street and the Friends Committee on national legislation In fact a few weeks ago the prepare act was included in the National Taxpayer Union's annual top 10 Bipartisan no-brainer's list which includes quote Straightforward measures that should not invite fierce ideological debate But saves taxpayers money and makes the government more efficient and I thank you all for attending this briefing This bill is extremely important to to us and is certainly something that should be important to all Members offices extreme weather affects every single district We must make sure that the federal government is taking every step necessary to adequately plan and incorporate resilience into their agency machines. Thank you Thank You Daniel So it sounds easy coordinate, but we know how difficult that is and I can think of several Agency initiatives and there is a lot going on it. I'm sure you know it can be sort of overwhelming lots of work on Resiliency But I'm not sure how much Communication between the agencies there is so that would be one thing I certainly would like to see Our next speaker is Andrew Moylan who is executive director of our Street Institute and Also focusing on taxpayer Issues and fiscal responsibility Andrew Also is the lead voice on the organization's tax issues prior to joining our street He was vice president of government affairs for the National Taxpayers Union a grassroots taxpayer advocacy organization previously with the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute and a Completed internships in the US Senate and House of Representatives with members from his home state of Michigan Andrews writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal the New York Times and the weekly standard He's a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in political science and Andrew Delighted to welcome you. Thanks for being here Thank you Ellen and and thank you to ESI for the kind invitation. I didn't realize until today Just now Joe that I have another University of Michigan grad here. Do we have any Ohio State folks in the audience? Okay, good. I'm gonna tell my favorite Ohio State joke maybe two So what happens if you drive through Columbus, Ohio too slowly? They give you a degree from Ohio State One more football related which I can return to making football jokes because Michigan's actually good this year How many Ohio State football players is it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one, but he gets twenty five hundred dollars cash under the table and four credit hours to do it So Let me give you a brief background about what the Arshtra Institute is Who am I? Why am I here? So the Arshtra Institute is a free market think tank We are based here in Washington, DC but we have state and regional offices as well and I guess six places around the country and we do a tremendous amount of work on natural disaster preparedness response issues and the intersection with with public policy There are a couple of various that have been a big focus for us One which you've heard mentioned a few times already is the National Flood Insurance Program Much of our the sort of genesis of our organization and our expertise as an organization Ties back to insurance issues. And so we have for many years worked on In some cases it feels like banging our heads against a wall But attempting to reform the National Flood Insurance Program to address the the debt that we've heard about from folks to address the Misaligned incentives in the program We've also done work on on other issues though on for example earthquake risk in the state of California, which is You know one of these sort of we we everybody knows about flood risk because it happens all the time Everybody knows about hurricane risk because it happens all the time Earthquake risk sort of recedes to the background when we don't have major events and yet That's a huge huge issue particularly in places like California and others on the West Coast We've we've started looking into wildfire issues and trying to figure out how we can Align policy to better protect ourselves from wildfire risk We've also worked on trying to encourage what are essentially subsidy free zones in coastal areas in the country and The coastal barrier resources system if people are familiar with it, and we think that this is a common-sense way a From from our perspective consistent with free markets and limited government and our sort of conservative libertarian principles That one of the first steps we should take is to stop subsidizing behavior That makes the problem worse that makes the problems for taxpayers worse And that makes risks for humans worse And so the sort of unifying theme of that work is reducing costs for taxpayers We've spent you know nearly half a trillion dollars on on hazard damages since 1988 Much of which of course comes back to taxpayers the national flood insurance program the last I checked the numbers about 23 billion If we want to put some more precision on it the national flood insurance program is in debt to taxpayers To that degree we want to reduce the human toll Of natural disasters. I'm gonna ask for a show of hands. How many of you been plucked off of a roof? To escape from floodwaters Nobody good. Okay. We'd like to keep it that way Because that is of course extraordinarily dangerous and we have unfortunately a policy infrastructure that does not do enough to one Tell people honestly what risks they face to live in certain areas And two that when disasters do happen that hamper our ability to respond to those in effective ways So that we don't have to pluck people off of a roof in a helicopter And we've seen of course the tremendous human toll that major flooding events major storm events can have and the last thing that that we want to do is we want to enhance the role of private markets of private actors in helping to respond to to disaster and to mitigate disaster risk and so For us, you know, that's been the crux of a lot of our work on the national flood insurance program for example is trying to introduce risk-based rates so that people understand the risk that they face To live in in places that they live and so to us the prepare act is a very simple bit of common sense To try to better coordinate our federal and state resources As it relates to disaster preparedness and response and so as Daniel mentioned there is no significant cost to taxpayers Frankly, even if there were a significant cost of taxpayers, I'd be happy to serve you up You know some offsets that I think we could do without I've spent years identifying trillions of dollars worth of What at least I regard as waste inefficiency fraud abuse In federal spending and those resources would be much better spent On efforts like this I always say that one of the reasons that I'm such a passionate believer in limited government is precisely because I think we don't spend enough on the stuff that matters and that is an appropriate role for federal or state or local governments And so, you know, even if there were a cost, I think that we should still be having this conversation and so some simple reorganizations That are embodied in the prepare act can I think help improve our response and I would point out one thing that you know Perhaps we'll we'll walk through in some more detail in the questions What the the structure of the bill is but the third title of it? which Daniel alluded to creating an inventory of regional disaster response agencies And and creating a function for those people to meet and communicate with one another is something that I think is important because we have One thing that we struggle with in government is having an inventory of anything And and having an ability to understand who the appropriate responding agencies are Having a communication function for them so that they can help to coordinate response over wide regions Is something that makes a tremendous amount of sense. It's not something that we do well enough today And it's something that the prepare act Would improve our ability to do and so So we we have sort of spearheaded The you know conservative response and outreach on this you saw outside that a copy of a coalition letter that we organized with several of our conservative allies That agree that this is a common-sense step that That we think is consistent with our principles and and something that we think is Is tremendously important and so we commend you and your boss for your work on that And with that, I guess we'll I'll turn it over to you and we'll get to questions Andrew, thank you so much for that And I think definitely teed up some some important issues all three of you did and I would like to to open it up for questions and I would encourage You to be brave and curious and I I Certainly have some but I don't want to hog the floor so so please Yes Hi, my name is Ellen with the American Meteorological Society policy program I've got a question actually just for a little more background on one of the specific things I see in the summary of the bill Is that the the website to facilitate among other things? The identification and interpretation of the best available meteorological science Could you go into a little background about why that's in there and and just a little bit about that? Sure, you hear me so so I encourage you to first look at the bill from a broader perspective I think we highlight specific data sets and information that other agencies have requested and think would be valuable in improving their resilience preparedness One of those was meteorological meteorological data So that's why that's been specifically identified though We're certainly encouraging to share any pertinent data related to disaster resilience preparedness If that makes sense address your question All right, I can provide a little bit of perspective from GAO and some of our work Almost every report we've done related to this realm Ends up with the same question from different types of decision-makers. It's like you want. What do you want me to be resilient to? and Where do I get the information? So There's lots of different sources of information right now and it's very confusing to anybody who's not an expert in these particular topics so I think you know that aspect of the bill Relates to a lot of the findings in GAO's reports about how do you better? Collect and share information Yes, sir Nick Barbash Sander Cain's office two related questions number one how have how closely have you been following efforts that are underway in in various regions with vulnerability to to sea level rise Places like the Gulf Institute in the New Orleans area and the The Southeast Florida Climate Compact there We're looking at something similar in Hampton, Rose, Virginia So it's curious how you how effective you see those regional programs being And then the second was This sort of whole of government issue is something that we've been following closely given the number of of agencies involved in this You know, there's you know at least a dozen federal agencies that that look at resilience issues but but no one for whom it's kind of the You know who has leadership Authority And just in looking at this bill looks like it sets up a interagency counsel Just devil's advocate. I mean isn't that just adding another cook in an already fairly crowded kitchen Yeah, I'd be happy to certainly address the Last one the GAO high risk report identified that there are some federal government agencies that are Are doing fairly well with disaster resilience preparedness incorporating that into their mission over some agencies just aren't taking it seriously and Aren't as effective as they probably should be So this bill in essence will set up a forum for the 12 or so as you identified federal government agencies that have a mission to To prepare and incorporate resilience at their project delivery strategies to work with other agencies and work amongst themselves to share data information and best practices To ensure that every agency is able to make more informed and evidence-based decisions So while there's some agencies that are doing well some are not and even though what agencies that are doing well Could probably be better informed by up-to-date data and collaborating amongst different agencies So that's just simply establishes a form in which they can share information Do you like to speak to the first GAO hasn't evaluated those specific programs, so I can't really speak to those But you know the federal government does have a lot of things under way a lot of them are making a big difference within agencies You know the executive orders and the adaptation plans and everything else But most of what's underway now is Based on the executive orders, so as soon as this administration leaves they may or may not be continued I think what this bill does is At least sort of cements in place some of the Coordination functions that are in place right now across the federal government So is it ideal? You know with the way that federal agencies are organized now this is a reasonable approach I think and this is just me speaking as me not as GAO So on the on the cooks in the kitchen question, I think that's a good one I'm gonna give you possibly the world's most trivial example That I think explains at least our perspective on this which is So at at the our street institute we have to you know when we get a grant from a private foundation We have certain tracking responsibilities. We have you know certain goals, whatever and We don't have a single well We didn't until recently have a single person whose primary responsibility it was to track that and so it was a kind of secondary or tertiary responsibility for a half a dozen people or more whoever's operating on a given project area and as a result you have this very sort of tenuous grasp on on reporting in the first place and making sure that you're getting it all in one place and And making you know reports on time and doing that kind of thing. I mean, this is trivial stuff but what the the action that that we've taken is to you know have somebody who has primary Responsibility to do that kind of grant tracking. It's been helpful in coordinating it To sort of extend that that analogy of cooks in the kitchen You know any major restaurant is gonna have you know a bunch of cooks in the kitchen But they're also going to have an executive chef and the executive chef is there to make sure that everybody's operating Toward whatever the common goal is to get the plate out on time and to make sure that it's right And an absent that sort of coordinating Function, you know, there's there's a Some measure of chaos that's possible and I think that the evidence suggests that there is a significant degree of chaos in The federal government in particular but also state and regional agencies In their disaster preparedness and response and so this is sort of a simple common-sense way To help coordinate those entities and I don't think there's a lot of drawback to it It's you're not you're not creating a tremendous number of for you know, for example, you're not creating a huge new agency, you know with Huge amounts of staff that sort of thing that would would concern me So there's to me there's not a lot of drawback to it And there's a lot of potential upside to having an improved coordination function Fred thanks Coming back to a comment that Ellen made mentioning building codes The there are the vocabulary of resilience and all the associated terms has been evolving over time and Dialing back to the days of mitigation and disaster risk reduction Looking at the pre disaster measures that may be taken like risk-based premiums To what extent does the prepare act address effectively Disaster risk reduction and to what extent does it support the functions of building and land use regulation? Which have proven effective in the case of many other hazards What's the attitude of our street toward regulatory efforts related to building and land use? Well, I can tell you that We are certainly skeptical of the notion of of any kind of federal building code That said I think that there are some things that can be done that are consistent To encourage states to do you know better Preparation better planning You know, we've we've toyed around with the idea Ellen mentioned the Stafford Act we've toyed around with the idea of having essentially a sliding scale of reimbursement for states as for disaster payments In order to help encourage them to take actions ahead of time to reduce their risk to understand the risk that they face And so while I'm skeptical of any sort of single federal response that establishes a single code I think that there are some related efforts that you could do that That helped get to the same goal without some of the same challenges And so and I'll let the others respond to the first part of the question about What does this do to essentially reduce? disaster, you know exposure in the first place and I Would say that no single bill can address the panoply of issues that we face as it relates to disaster risk You know this this bill is targeted at one component of it. There are many other components, which a lot of us work on but You know to me that's that's part of the appeal of this bill is that it's a single sort of channel Which I think is a relatively easy case to make and you know taking those sort of small bites Is an important way to get to the ultimate goal Rather than creating one big giant comprehensive framework, which everybody's gonna have You know some complaint with here or there that this is an easy part that you can move the ball on in in regard to the the building in land use The prepare act will ensure that the federal governments the state governments and the local governments have the adequate data and best practices to make better building in land use Decisions I think that and then in doing so will help decrease our disaster exposure It's ensuring that the federal government is Sharing best practices effectively amongst themselves sharing data and sharing information ensuring everyone is well informed as possible Make evidence-based decisions in order to better incorporate resilience and disaster preparedness extreme weather preparedness into their agency mission So we're not caught off guard by these disaster events So everyone knows what what's vulnerable? How can we curb that vulnerability and thus in doing so we should decrease our disaster exposure and fiscal exposure and I might add to Fred's good question is the private sector The Interagency Council is there sort of a private sector component or do you imagine that would be part of it? State local and private sector Participants right there's so the Interagency Council is just established in order to ensure that agencies are able to share amongst themselves We do have a separate component of the bill that ensures there's regional collaboration amongst state local and federal governments and That should address some of those concerns. I think it's Joe. Did you want to say anything or not about? About that. I don't have a whole lot to add other than to say that we have some studies underway related to Resilience and design standards and building kits. So we'll be in touch in a year or so and and I think that And that's what I was I mean it to your point about is it just another Council The reason I think this is my opinion that we see So we have seen bills so many times Suggest an interagency council is because we need that but it's hard to do But just to give you an example Let me just take buildings since that's my area I know that Department of Homeland Security has a pilot program called resiliency star Right for residential looking at applying The fortified home standard, which is a sort of a beyond above code a Practice to to enhance durability resiliency and so that's happening and then there's the Department of Energy That is is For example has a zero energy ready homes program and One I one thing I think is important to look at is it's not I mean for buildings There are so many things that we we want and need for building so many things that That different Experts in different agencies even with resources provide so not only do we not want our buildings to fall down And catch fire which are building codes Ensure and we want them to have a certain minimum efficiency based on what's available and cost effective energy codes and But if we can apply What we know about energy efficiency and even Using renewable energy so that The that your house can be for example More comfortable if there's a power outage it's still going to be comfortable because it's so energy efficient perhaps you have Renewable energy so that you can You can continue operations even with even during a power outage Those are very different things the National Institute of Standards and Technology is looking at What it does with metrics and standards so that there's some consistency HUD after Hurricane Sandy With with help from Rockefeller Foundation established a Competition called resilient by design and got the best minds in in land use and and building design to have some input as to What can we do differently so that this doesn't happen again, so they're just so I think that Having having the private sector and the federal government coordinate There's just so many opportunity the National Institute of Building Sciences has done a lot of work on Resiliency so there are some lots of resources to bring to bear but we need better systems better organization And that would be just to give it a little more sometimes concrete examples can help My name is David Hattus. I'm with the Institute for Building Technology and Safety and my question will relate to the third bullet on the Presentation that you had up there which was to encourage the federal government to work with states and local agencies to promote Regional approaches to resiliency and it ties into what Ellen just mentioned the NDRC the National Disaster Resilience Competition Which which are due to HUD in two weeks Both Dr. Krimgold and I participated in some of the Rockefeller Foundation efforts to advance that program and that program indeed Had a major objective of breaking down the silos both at the federal level and at the state and local level that that Typify the response to disasters What we have found is that some states did a better job than others Some states really were able to collaborate and bring everybody to work together and some said this is a HUD program so We're emergency managers. We're not involved in that. My question is GAO just released a very excellent report evaluating the Sandy Recovery efforts and it did talk a lot about issues of resiliency. In fact, I think it was the focus Will there be an effort to to try to harvest the lessons learned from NDRC? It'll be a while because they're going to make the awards in another six months or so But it it'll be a ripe field To look at how to break down the silos at the state and local level as well And what can the federal government do? I'm the question is Will GAO be taking a look at that? Yes, there's money involved. We'll be taking a look at it That's the simplest answer. I think in a real general sense Most of our work in this area is Trying to change the conversation from how do we respond to disasters to how do we plan for? Likely here that disasters are going to happen and how we budget for it need to get the stuff on the books and understand that You know, it's something that we need to be prepared for and I think our bill sets that Establishes a framework the regional councils in which these folks can incorporate better practices as found letters from a GAO or from The NRDC I believe you said some of those findings So this just establishes the framework that these folks need to better collaborate and how they've actually collaborate and break down these silos Just somewhat up to there it Continued on each region what works best for that specific region in those unique subsets of states and local governments or whatnot We were just chatting before the briefing about sometimes there are conflicting requirements and regulations and The example that came up the other day was how you know trees This was the US Forest Service and trees can of course have many many benefits and can they can be dangerous with extreme weather, but they can also aid in You know cooling and that are mitigating the urban heat island effect in extreme weather so many things like that But they can also block the sun so that you don't have solar access if you want to put solar panels on your house so those things really do come right down to the local level and And that's the challenge. I think When we when we get to implementing these we have to you know, that communication has to be At at all levels other questions Hello, my name is Miranda Peterson and I work at the Center for American Progress We've written on this subject quite a bit and big fans of the bill One of the things that we've noticed in our when looking at resilience spending throughout the federal government is The difficulty of sometimes dividing the resilience budget the extreme weather resilience budget from the rest of the budget as a whole What can be resilience for one community? Say a hard infrastructure gray infrastructure building a seawall, etc Rates for one community, but for another community it may be Green infrastructure or parks more trees to absorb all that flood water for another community say defense community resilience to extreme weather might also rate as an anti-terrorism effort or perhaps for certain low-income communities Extreme weather resilience is also their economic resilience which can rate as nutrition assistance. So And oftentimes this can be very difficult because there seems to be a larger effort to bake resilience into the budget as a whole Which is certainly why we should know how much we're spending on it And how much we're also saving taxpayers across the country So do you have any perspective on how exactly? government agencies communities states might Be able to analyze and look at where the dividing line is what counts as resilience and what does not Thank you so just Quickly on that. I think you raise an interesting point that and this is a challenge that we see in Every piece of legislation ever essentially is is how do you have appropriate definitions? That that allow you to account for for resources and everybody's gonna have You know a different application for some funding stream than somebody else and I'll give you an example of another Issue that we've worked on is the Restore Act. So after the BP oil spill in the Gulf Congress passed the Restore Act that says that any fines that were associated with the BP Spill would be divided up among the the affected states and the affected states are supposed to use those funds for environmental and economic restoration projects You could argue that Congress was insufficiently precise in exactly how they defined what environmental and Economic restoration projects would be and so we've been engaged In the Gulf Coast our southern region director who's based in Alabama has been working to try to make sure that Basically that states don't do crazy things with the dollars that there have been some who say well, let's you know What's economic rest? Let's spend this money on on a baseball stadium and it seems pretty clear to me that that's not the intent of Congress in In diverting these funds to state governments for environmental and economic restoration, so It's in a way sort of a non answer to your question is it's more a nod of the head to say yes, that is a challenge I don't know that there's and Daniel can speak to you know If he thinks that there's a bigger nexus with this bill in particular It seems to me that that's a challenge that's litigated elsewhere In the authorization process in the appropriations process and guidance that's given to and by executive agencies And it's not to say that it's not a challenge. It is But it's it's in a sense You know sort of an elsewhere challenge Yeah, great, and I do think that's the great question I think it's a little bit somewhat outside the scope of what we try to address and prepare acting I could see that there are some there's some value perhaps to Dividing resilience from the from the regular budget at least set separating it out to the better analyze and assess it But from our perspective From a planning and project delivery perspective we we think that resilient should be incorporated into all these various missions and agency missions in order to ensure that When agencies are planning or delivering projects, they are thinking about how can we best protect this asset or this service? From extreme weather events and doing show that should curb the risk. That's more where we're going in terms of the budgetary stuff It's it's not really within the scope of the bill. It's a good question. Oh, very interesting Yes, you've you've stumbled on to one of the unanswerable questions And the reason I say that I mean there's a couple different ways to look at how you would break out resilience funding in general The one the way that the federal government is approaching the issue right now is By building, you know, what do you want me to be resilient to into every federal program, right? So we have programs designed to do specific things under specific circumstances Agencies are recognizing that those circumstances are changing and they're trying to build the new circumstances into how they do business on an everyday basis If you look at the problem from that perspective You're not going to be able to get a Real good idea of how much you spend on resilience, right? And that's probably okay You shouldn't want to actually get that number because that means you're building into everything right now Now it's probably not very satisfying and it's not terribly satisfying for me either and it gets back to my strategic planning point What are we actually trying to accomplish as a federal government? It's good that we're, you know, mainstreaming resilience and everything that we do on a day-to-day basis But there's some things that the federal government needs to do that other people can't do and that's where it's If you don't have a clear vision and you don't have some clear pots of money to do the federal government things And nobody else can do you and you're not gonna have a dollar value for that And if you had a strategic plan saying the federal government's gonna do do this specific thing And then you'd be able to track it, but we don't have that so that's a that's a good point good Responses and a really good question and I was thinking back on something Andrew said about this bill being a First step an important step narrow in scope and then to Joe's point We yes, there there are things that the federal government owns and controls and is responsible for and those are That's sort of the first line of line of defense or the first Goal perhaps, but then to your to your point of the question There are also things at the state and local level that need to be Determined and to me it comes back to wanting to have that dialogue have people involved in the process for example Low-income communities advocates So that everybody can be asked the question. What does resilience mean to you? What what do you need and I think you'll get lots of different answers and Perhaps that's a way and I'm thinking out loud. I apologize, but that's a way to At least get these issues on the table and find out where those possible conflicts Can come in and what the pie is and what the needs are Before you start slicing it up might be an example of not wanting to be too prescriptive at the federal level So the thank you for that Any other questions? Yes, sir how will we relate to like female response because I'm a first responder in the state of New York and I know in big things and In big incidents happen FEMA comes in with Integrated response and their leadership levels go down to you know State County town levels. How will how will that I feel like this could possibly When they decide to they need to have FEMA needs a response, right? Can this any way be integrated into that? so they know What tools they like um, I would just I didn't see it on here FEMA, but how will you know When they work with the state and local planning to facilitate The preparedness will this be able to go into FEMA at all the act at all It's female certainly play a part in Sharing best practices to state and local governments ensure that they are As prepared as possible, of course FEMA some with the disaster response or entity of last resort So ensuring that we have robust state and local policies Whether it's evacuation plans or what not can certainly play a valuable role as well as coordinating with other agencies Department of Transportation What is it gonna look like if there's this sort of flooding in this area? What roads are gonna wash out so we know immediately after the disaster? This is where we can access since I'm not saying that's what they'll do It's it's some of the kind of information sharing that would be helpful and knowing who's working at the other agency What they're doing what their best practices are what their vulnerabilities are how we can best mitigate it So in that sense I could see FEMA Being a huge beneficiary to other agencies, but also It will help them in their ultimate agency missions, which is to better protect the public and to respond to these disasters And I'm hopeful there are some lessons learned that we can draw from From Katrina from Sandy from many places Yeah Thank you anyone else Okay, well, it's is this a first dammering for us to end early But this has been great. Thank you so much for coming and for your terrific questions and If you think of more feel free to send them in we'll also have information on our website summaries Of the briefing and I want to thank our panel very very much For your for your input for your yes, Daniel Yeah, if I may I just want to thank everyone on behalf of Congress and Carrite for attending this briefing I hope it was informative of course if you work for a member We encourage you to run this up the chain and I'm more than happy to answer any District-specific questions if you're an organization you're interested in learning more we love talking about this bill It's very important for us in the country. Of course. I thank you guys very very much J. L. R. Street. We really appreciate it absolutely appreciate all the great questions and the great efforts that Congressman Cartwright as has put into this and you guys as well, so Thanks Thank you all