[Skywarn] Senate Bill Could Cut Number Of Weather Service Offices

[Larry Nordlund]

Well done Kevin
Well done!


Larry Nordlund
847 276 9074

President Kennedy once said;
"Anyone can make a difference and everyone should try."

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"Weather or not it's the highway to hail"

<div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: Kevin Heyboer <k.heyboer at verizon.net> </div><div>Date:06/19/2015  9:25 AM  (GMT-06:00) </div><div>To: kc5fm at juno.com, skywarn at mailman.qth.net, 'Email Lists' <okem at yahoogroups.com>, texomaem at yahoogroups.com, 'AltusEM Lists' <altusem at yahoogroups.com> </div><div>Subject: Re: [Skywarn] Senate Bill Could Cut Number Of Weather Service
 	Offices </div><div>
</div>Good morning Lloyd and the group.  I did a little bit of research on the
information provided in this e-mail.

1. Senator John Thune (R) of South Dakota is the Chairman of the Senate
Commerce committee, and would thus monitor the activities of the Department
of Commerce, of which NOAA and NWS are a part.

2. The Senate Bill draft linked on the news article has no bill number
attached, so it has not passed the committee, and is, in fact being
"floated" as an idea.

3.  The link provided by Lloyd is to House of Representatives Bill #2413
called the "Weather Service Forecasting Improvement Act of 2013" and it
allocates 100 million dollars to improving weather modeling and space
platforms for weather forecasting.  There is no mention of any downsizing of
the NWS.

4.  If there is a matching bill floating in the House of Representatives, I
cannot find it.

5.  There are already 6 Regional Headquarters for the NWS.  They are the
Southern, Eastern, Central, Western, Alaskan, and Pacific Headquarters.

6.  The language in the draft of the bill is equally suggestive that
Republican John Thune would like to replace employees of the federal
government who are covered by the Federal Civil Service Act and have
retirement and health benefits with private contractors who would not be
covered by the Federal Civil Service Act, thus saving lots of money in paid
benefits.

7.  There would still have to be personnel at the 122 NWS Offices to run and
maintain the WSR-88D and the NOAA Weather Radio systems.  

8.  Since the NOAA Weather Radio/SAME system is the entry point for ALL
Emergency Alert System messages, I don't find it likely that this bill will
gain much footing.

This is just my opinion, based upon of few facts, and others may come to a
different conclusion.

Kevin Heyboer KD4UYR
AEC Cherokee County NCARES
Southwest Carolina SKYWARN Net Manager
http://www.cherokee-ares.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Skywarn [mailto:skywarn-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Lloyd
Colston
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 7:15 PM
To: skywarn at mailman.qth.net; Email Lists; texomaem at yahoogroups.com; AltusEM
Lists
Subject: [Skywarn] Senate Bill Could Cut Number Of Weather Service Offices

"There are 122 National Weather Service offices nationwide, but there's a
plan being floated in the U.S. Senate to reduce the number of those offices
to just six, meaning many jobs could be lost." http://bit.ly/1GTwFO4

"Weather Forecasting Improvement Act of 2014" http://bit.ly/1TyYwZb is the
text of the bill.

Lloyd
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