At Hearing, Sen. Portman Presses FEMA Nominee to Expedite Disaster Relief for Ohio

WASHINGTON, June 13 -- Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, issued the following news release:

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- FEMA Nominee Tells Portman He Will Move Quickly to Process Disaster Relief Requests From States Like Ohio

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At a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing yesterday, Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) questioned the nominee to be Administrator of FEMA, Jeffrey Byard, on his commitment to ensuring a quick response to Major Disaster Declarations from states that suffer from natural disasters. Recently, 21 tornadoes struck Ohio, causing severe damage and Senators Portman and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have sent a letter to President Trump urging him to quickly approve Governor DeWine's request for a Major Disaster Declaration.

Portman also asked Mr. Byard to commit to supporting the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to ensure nonprofit and faith-based organizations have the support they need to be protected from acts of domestic terrorism.

Portman recently introduced the Protecting Faith-Based and Nonprofit Organizations from Terrorism Act that would codify the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to ensure that faith-based and nonprofit organizations have the resources they need to protect themselves and their facilities.

Excerpts of his questioning can be found below and a video can be found here: https://youtu.be/VdUjCi-lxLQ

Portman: "First, thanks to each of you for your willingness to step up and to serve. Some of you are stepping into some really tough jobs. I know Mr. Wolf you've already been there and it's getting tougher and you say unprecedented in terms of the crisis, just to put a finer point on it. We have had huge numbers of people come over the border before. They tended to be single men and they tended to be from Mexico but we've never had a situation where we've had so many children and families coming over the border. And we've never had the asylum process be misused in this way. So we have in Ohio, a strong interest in this, as all Americans do because of the children and the human trafficking but also because of the drugs that are coming over. And specifically, crystal meth is our new concern in Ohio. We've finally gotten the opioid crisis somewhat under control, although we've got a long way to go but at least we've seen some progress for the first time in eight years. Now, directly from Mexico, pure crystal meth is coming in and in essence creating an even more difficult problem for some of our law enforcement in that it's a psychostimulant as opposed to opioids, which is causing great harm. So, part of the challenge we have is how do you get people back on the border, protecting our border from the drugs coming across, and the funding we've provided has been helpful, but not if the personnel are dealing with the humanitarian crisis. I hope that we can pass the supplemental to provide some help on the humanitarian side quickly.

"Mr. Byard, you are being nominated for another really important job, FEMA. Seems like they never end. There's a disaster every couple of weeks it seems like. My home state of Ohio got hit hard recently. As you know, we had flooding in Southern Ohio a couple of months ago, now we've had these tornadoes that touched down. We had 21 recorded tornadoes touch down throughout the state. 21 tornadoes, all in the space of one night, one evening from about 10pm until about 1am. I was there in the vicinity, about 20 miles away from where some of them touched down so I was right there the next morning and I saw some of the damage firsthand. I met with the first responders and thanked them. I met with the residents and went to a shelter to bring them food and water. The damage is unbelievable. You'll look at the numbers and you won't see the deaths that you would expect from such a disaster. It's a miracle and thank God it happened at night when people weren't at the shopping malls because there are shopping malls that are totally destroyed. People would have been killed by the dozens, but we do have incredible damage. As you know, perhaps, Governor DeWine has recently made a request for a National Disaster [Declaration]. I'm strongly supporting that, I've sent a letter supporting it. My question to you today is, do you commit, should you be confirmed, to responding quickly to these kind of requests so that people can begin to rebuild their lives?"

Jeffrey Byard, Nominee for Director of FEMA: "Senator, I do. Thank you for the question and thank you for the comment. You know 21 tornadoes in one night, that's devastating destruction no matter what state it is. The way I approach that is, I'm asked a lot, 'What's the worst disaster you've seen?' And I've seen unfortunately, or fortunately as an emergency manager, I've seen a lot of disasters. I always tell people, it's the one where I'm sitting in the living room and everything the family owns is destroyed. That's their worst disaster. We get caught up in numbers a lot. We get caught up in unprecedented and that it's there but you know, what Ohio saw and the citizens of Ohio, it's devastating to them. There is nothing that we look at, from a FEMA standpoint, that we don't actually have, you know we have units set up to address when a declaration comes in. We have teams on the ground, as you know, with Ohio now. Yes, I will commit to very expeditiously processing disaster declarations from governors."

Portman: "Thank you, we need the help quickly. The small businesses and individuals who were impacted are deeply hurting and the community has responded and it's been incredible, but we've got to have some help and we need it now.

"Another program that you will have responsibility for should you be confirmed will be the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. This is really important, Mr. Wolf was talking earlier about the increase in domestic threat and in particular there is a domestic threat on a number of our nonprofit and faith-based organizations. This is a grant program that's meant to help them. Provide them with some of the best advice and counsel, but also provide them with some hardening for their facilities. I've heard a lot from the Jewish community in Ohio and I've been to some of the synagogues, community centers, and schools that have been affected with graffiti and a lot of death threats and bomb threats. They depend on this grant program to be able to secure those facilities and to train the employees. I'm very pleased to see that security personnel can now be used with this federal grant money to contract with security personnel. It's a carve out of our annual appropriations bill, it's not established as a separate program, it's not authorized. So I've introduced legislation, along with Gary Peters, of this committee, to try to be sure that we can actually authorize this program and have some certainty about it. So we would appreciate your support on that. We've authorized it at $75 million a year, that's $15 million more than it's now being appropriated. The reason is, it's not going to our smaller communities, many of whom need it badly. So my question for you today, and Mr. Wolf as well, will you support this vitally important program and commit to helping us actually get it into law and into statute?"

Mr. Byard: "Senator, you know again, good question and currently the grants within FEMA resides in the resilience directorate, which is not currently under my portfolio if you will, but I do believe, having been a recipient of federal preparedness grants of various nature, I do believe in the importance of them and I'll be happy to work with you, if confirmed, to better that program."

Mr. Chad Wolf: "From a policy perspective, Senator, there's great benefit, both in the Nonprofit Security Grant Program as well as the grant program that's run out of the policy office when we talk about terrorism prevention so from a policy perspective there are many benefits to supporting that long term."

Portman: "Thank you, this is the Nonprofit Security Grant Program and again, it's one that's working and we want to get it into statute to be sure there's certainty for it."