TOPICS
TOPICS
Bill would provide steady funding and staff for executive boards
Two senators have introduced legislation to provide centralized funding and administration of Federal Executive Boards, the regional organizations responsible for coordinating agencies' crisis response efforts.
"Federal Executive Boards provide critical support in coordinating emergency preparedness and response efforts, yet they have no institutionalized structure or permanent funding mechanism," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who introduced the bill with Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio.
The boards were created in 1961 as a means for agencies outside the Washington area to work together. But they lack a congressional charter, and currently are funded by voluntary contributions from agencies. Voinovich said while the boards had functioned effectively under that structure, they need more formal support.
Akaka and Voinovich's bill would require the Office of Personnel Management to administer a central fund financing FEB operations. OPM would provide the funding for administrative and oversight work. The agencies that participate in the boards would be required to contribute to the fund according to their size. The donations would be calculated under a formula set by the OPM director in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget and the participating agencies.
In February 2008, then-OPM director Linda Springer announced that the agency had won approval for a similar funding approach.
OPM spokesman Michael Orenstein said the agency would not comment on Akaka and Voinovich's bill because the legislation was pending. Voinovich said both OPM and the Government Accountability Office were consulted on the bill's language.
Akaka held a hearing on the state of the boards in 2007 that focused on the lack of a steady, reliable stream of resources.
Kimberly Ainsworth, executive director of the Greater Boston FEB and one of the witnesses at that hearing, said Monday that she strongly supported the senators' proposal.
The legislation also sets requirements to stabilize the staffing and governance of the executive boards. OPM would have to develop a formal policy for staffing the boards, some of which have no permanent staff, and would have the power to assign agencies to detail employees to run FEBs. In return, the executive boards would have to create bylaws subject to OPM's approval, and elect chairmen to oversee their activities.
COMMENTS
- The FEB network can best be characterized as a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. A number, a small to medium proportion, have been well-regarded over the years as effective agents of interagency coordination and synergy - due largely to self-motivating executive directors supported by their employing agencies, while the majority tend to be plodding, passive information-disseminating organizations, having an at best moderate impact on their member agencies. A small number have established poor records due to apathetic at best leadership (with the executive director position being more or less a dumping ground for sponsoring agencies' to sequester otherwise under-performing staff). Whether this latest initiative (it's not the first by any means) will be strongly pushed forward, as earlier efforts were not, remains to be seen, as does the effectiveness of enhanced CSC/OPM control and oversight - which has also waxed and waned over the decades, depending on priorities of succesive administrations and how they did or didn't see the FEB network as an effective interagency change agent. Jeremiah Posted April 8, 2009 8:36 AM
- Obviously you don't work on a FEB. it is severly broken. because federal agency have faced budget and resourse issues themselves, the volunteer funding has dried up. with this standardize funding, the FEBs will go away. period FEB member Posted April 7, 2009 9:54 AM
- OK. As I understand it--since 1961--we have had an organizational structure that provides regional coordination for federal agencies, which "has functioned effectively" without centralized oversight or funding. So, it works, but now we need to impose a new layer of bureaucratic oversight and a formulated central funding--through contributions from those same agencies. What ever happened to the concept of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" J.J. Posted April 7, 2009 8:01 AM
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