Show Notes:
Guests this month:
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins, IAEM Government Affairs Committee Chair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjflynn001/
Thad Huguley, IAEM Government Affairs Director: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thad-huguley-82808624/
Other items referenced:
IAEM Government Affairs Committee website: https://www.iaem.org/groups/us-committees/government-affairs
2024 Legislative Priorities: https://www.iaem.org/Portals/25/documents/2024/Government%20Affairs/2024%20Legislative%20Priorities.pdf
FY2023 EMPG Return on Investment Report: https://www.iaem.org/Portals/25/documents/2024/Government%20Affairs/EMPG%20ROI%20Report%202024%20edition.pdf
National Weather Service Grassroots Funding Advocacy Campaign: https://www.iaem.org/Groups/USA-Committees/Government-Affairs/NWS-Budget-Support
Recent Legislative and Policy Positions: https://www.iaem.org/groups/us-committees/IAEM-Letters-Statements-Testimony
Celebrating a “Mission Possible” International Code Council/FEMA Panel Recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/wPTMT8CrzFs
Register for the June 25, 2024 4pm EST IAEM Critical Infrastructure Consortium meeting https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=8Unkj5SLt0-ZBm-Tnagtc2bJ8BOsWLVJky7p--9FVpdUMDk4WjRSVVI3NE1WRkdMUE4ySFMxSVpQNS4u
Transcript:
Taylor Frizzell:
Welcome, folks. Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining us again here on the Just In Case podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Frizzell. And joining me as always with his bright and shining face is Mr. Justin Kates IAEM USA president. Hello, Justin. Happy spring.
Justin Kates:
Hey, Taylor. I've been looking forward to this episode since the beginning of this podcast. So finally, we're here.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, I was going to say, this has kind of been one of your babies for as long as I think I've known you. This has been one of the things that you love talking about. So I'm glad that we're able to have this conversation. And it's actually a great segue. So this month, we're going to be talking about all things government affairs and emergency management. And today, we are joined by Mary Jo Flynn Nevins, who is the chair of the IAEM USA Government Affairs Committee, and Mr. Thad Huguley, the government affairs director and staff liaison to the Government Affairs Committee. So thank you both so, so much for joining us. I'm so happy that you guys are able to be here. Before we move into our chat, and I bombard you with all of the questions I have about all things government affairs, I'm going to pass it off to Justin here for an update on IAEM.
Justin Kates:
Perfect. Well, thank you, Taylor. And this month, you know, certainly like every other is been a busy one, but we're also getting into the summer. And so hopefully I will have some time to take at least some sort of a break and not have to deal with I am all hours of the day. And I'm sure the rest of the board and our staff will be doing the same. So a couple of things that happened this month. First of all, As IAEM president, you have the opportunity to participate in a variety of panels and discussions and various events and represent the emergency management space. And I had the opportunity to do that with the International Code Council this month. As part of Building Safety Month, and I participated in a panel to talk about the importance of building codes in reducing risk across the country. It was moderated by Dr. Lori Moore Merrell, who's the US Fire Administrator. And I was also joined on the panel with Karl Fippinger, who works for ICC, is a CEM and an IAEM member. So it was great to be up there with him. And we just talked about the importance of that interface between emergency managers and our building inspectors, code officials, and those who are passionate about building safety. And so that was a great opportunity. There is a live stream that we will, a recording of that live stream that we'll put in the show notes. So for folks that want to see that and see what we talked about, you'll be able to check that out. The other really exciting announcement from this month was our critical infrastructure consortium. So we've talked a little bit about that over the last a few months as it's been planned and been worked up behind the scenes. Ali Lampson and Greg Vernon have been doing quite a bit of work to prepare for that, and we had them on the podcast last month to announce that. Well, now we're coming to the point where this first event is going to be taking place, and if you don't remember from last month, it's going to be June 25th at 4 p.m. Eastern time. The website for the Critical Infrastructure Consortium is up on the IAEM website. You can go on, you can register for this upcoming event. And there's going to be some presentations from CISA, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, that I think are going to be very exciting. It's going to be a great way to kick this new consortium off. There's also some other projects that are going on behind the scenes that many may not see completely yet, but I just wanted to provide some insight and updates on what's going on. First of all, we've talked a few times about the work that we're doing with the Certification Commission to look at experience equivalency in lieu of a degree for the CEM, the Certified Emergency Manager program. And there's been a lot of work with the consultant that IAEM has hired to start this project off. And they're actually going to be starting interviews with key stakeholders this month. So we're making good progress with that. And our goal with this is really to ensure that we're doing our due diligence to determine if there is some reason that we might want to change the CEM framework and if we want to incorporate an equivalence for experience instead of a degree. The other project that's going on behind the scenes that I've been involved with is our state of emergency management study that we're working on partnership with FEMA and Argonne National Labs. They have been doing testing on the survey questions that we have helped to craft And hopefully over the next few months, we'll actually be able to start kicking that off and pushing that forward. So that's going to be another exciting project as well. That's all I actually have for this month. Normally I would incorporate lots of insight about some of our government affairs work, but since we've got government affairs experts on today, I'm not even going to bother. We'll just start right off with working with them on what some of the cool things that they're working on behind the scenes. So I'll kick it over to you, Taylor.
Taylor Frizzell:
I think you're just trying to start your summer vacation early, and you have bartered poor Mary Jo and Thad to come and do your job to talk about government affairs. I think that's what's happening here.
Justin Kates:
That might be right. That actually might be right.
Taylor Frizzell:
It's okay. I don't shade you for it at all. Before we get started, I want to give you folks a couple of minutes to introduce yourself to all of our listeners. And then we'll kind of dive into some questions. So Thad if you want to go first, a quick introduction, and then Mary Jo, I'll pass it over to you.
Thad Huguley:
Sure, Taylor. Thank you, Justin. I appreciate this opportunity to join you on the podcast today. So my background is, yeah, after I graduated from college, I moved to Washington, D.C. to go look for a job on Capitol Hill and spent a couple of months, you know, that summer looking for something and finally landed a job and ended up, you know, what I thought was going to be of four or five years in D.C. ended up, you know, being almost 15 years on Capitol Hill. You know, so I got experience working on both the Senate side of Capitol Hill and on the House side of Capitol Hill and really feel like, you know, over the course of 15 years, you kind of figure out how the place is stitched together and how it works and how the committee structure works. And, you know, I mean, sort of the whole how a bill becomes a law, it's a lot more complicated than the Saturday morning cartoon that we all grew up with, you know, I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill. So putting all that together, at some point, my wife and I decided that we were ready to get out of Washington, and so we moved to Nashville, Tennessee. As you can probably tell from my accent, I'm from the South. I'm from a small town in Alabama. My wife is from Memphis. So we moved to Nashville, which was somewhat equidistant between both sets of grandparents. And so I started my own business there in Nashville doing government relations work with different clients and was traveling back and forth to Washington on a regular basis. And while that was great for a while and being closer to family was great, the commuting back and forth got tough. So we ultimately decided to move back to the Washington area, just maintained my business, just moved it from Nashville to Washington. have been doing that now, I guess, since 2006, so sneaking up on 20 years now. And so in 2016, when Martha Braddock indicated she was ready to retire, I just happened to bump into Beth Armstrong and Clay Tyeryar, And they mentioned that they might be interested in talking to me about coming to do some work for IAEM to replace Martha. And so over the course of several months since Martha was phasing out and I started, I guess, right before the 2016 election. So I've been working with IAEM since then. I fully acknowledge I have zero practitioners experience as an emergency manager, but I think what I do bring is just an understanding of the legislative process and how the administration works with Capitol Hill and with the stakeholders and try to put all that together. So I really depend on experts like Mary Jo and Justin and And others who are the practitioners who have worked their professional lives and emergency management to give me sort of, help me understand what they do on a daily basis and how the policies that we're talking about on Capitol Hill would affect them. And ultimately what we're trying to do is to create a more user-friendly public policy environment for emergency managers. And so, yeah, it's been a real honor to work with a profession that wakes up every day thinking about how to make communities safer, you know, to think about it before the problems happen and then how to deal with it when inevitably they do happen and then how to move forward and hopefully avoid, you know, a similar type disaster happening in the future. So, I truly am. It's a client I'm super proud to be a part of, and I just appreciate the opportunity I've been given to work with this group for the last seven, eight years now, and hope to continue doing it for the foreseeable future.
Taylor Frizzell:
We are very happy to have you, and in your pursuit of figuring out what it is emergency managers do on a day-to-day basis, if you solve that please let me know because I'm not entirely sure what I do on a day-to-day basis. And I also am an emergency manager. So I feel your pain there, Thad, wholeheartedly. Mary Jo.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
Well, thank you, Taylor. And thank you, Justin, for inviting me onto this podcast. I have a different background than Thad, but we may convert him yet. I actually started at the city level as a senior government relations manager. and worked with our mayor and city council, putting together the legislative packages for the city and working with our lobbyists on Capitol Hill for the city. And prior to that, I had gotten handed as a management intern, gotten handed the hazard mitigation plan and told, hey, write this thing. You've got about six months to get it done. And I was able to successfully complete that. And then part of my position as the government relations manager was to advocate for the plan and to also advocate for the UASI funding that was coming into the city at the time. And then an opening happened within emergency management. And I found myself loving this world of the hazard mitigation plan and The different things that were happening at the city, they were experiencing fires and whatnot. And the first day on the job as an emergency manager was actually sitting in the EOC as food unit leader, ordering food for an entire EOC. Why? Because I still had the city manager's office purchasing card. So I took that transition over to emergency management, joined IAEM and really haven't looked back. For a period of time, I was the chair of the Emerging Technology Caucus. And that's where I spent a lot of time engaging with the Government Relations Committee and sharing some of the technology advancements and concerns we have for emergency management as those technologies kind of develop and change. And found myself getting more and more engaged in government relations until I arrived at this point as chair. So I look forward to continuing the work with this group and hopefully engaging more people in government relief and bringing them over to emergency management and vice versa.
Taylor Frizzell:
I love it. I want to convert as many people to emergency management as we can just slowly absorb all of them. That's that's logical, right? So normally we start these off by kind of getting a level set for the committee or whatever topic we're discussing. And so I want to start that way today as well. So I want to just kind of start by talking about what the Government Affairs Committee is and what the goals are for the committee for this year. And I know we're already halfway through the year. But I just want to highlight some of the goals that you folks have within the scope of the committee. So Mary Jo, maybe you want to start and then that kind of fill in.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
Yeah, so just a general overview of the committee structure. We have a chair, the director that serves that role as director and is the paid staff member through ASMI. We have two vice chairs that contribute and help with some of the tasks. And we invite a lot of subject matter experts in on our committee meetings to share what's going on in Capitol Hill, some of the inside baseball, some of the grant structure information and some of the ways in which IAEM can be better involved in communicating with our representatives on the Hill. And through those monthly meetings and special guest opportunities, we can formulate some of our legislative platform, which I'll let Thad get into a little more in detail. But that platform basically is IAEM's outlook as to how we can advocate for our emergency management community, and I'll let Thad talk through some of that detail.
Thad Huguley:
Yeah, so, I mean, from an agenda standpoint, just, you know, what we're focused on now, I mean, we find ourselves sort of in a post-COVID world now, and so for, you know, from, you know, March of 2020 until just about a year and a half or so ago, we were so focused on COVID and trying to make sure that we were able to get resources to meet the extraordinary demands on emergency managers and everyone who was involved in the response to the pandemic. I think we had tremendous success with that. Of course, there was a lot of money being thrown around trying to address the problem, but even so, you have to go in and you have to fight for your piece of the pie. IAEM NEMA the big city emergency managers, all of the other stakeholders who have have an interest in the in the preparedness grants. You know, we work together and we were able to secure significant resources to help to help emergency managers during that, you know, that time. Now that we're through the pandemic, I think there has been a little bit, not a little bit. I mean, there's been pushback, I think. I mean, there are a lot of a lot of people on Capitol Hill who feel like we spent too much money during the pandemic. And priorities change and now, you know, we emergency managers and FEMA are all lumped into the same appropriations process that border enforcement is lumped into and the Coast Guard. I mean, DHS is this weird conglomeration of so many different federal agencies that, I mean, culturally, you could not find more different agencies that are all kind of lumped in together, that are all kind of loosely, you know, homeland security. And so, you know, now that the focus has shifted away from COVID more towards border enforcement, you know, you see more and more resources going towards border enforcement now. And so we find ourselves sort of on having to be, It's not as easy to get what we want as it might have been a few years ago. And so, you know, honestly, FY 24 was a tough year for for emergency management from an appropriation standpoint. You know, the other thing that we that's going on right now is you have so much dysfunction, particularly in the house. House of Representatives right now, and you've got these weird dynamics, you know, where you've got a majority party that's just barely holding on to that majority. And even though they're in the majority, sometimes not all of their members vote their way and need Democrats to help, you know, move an agenda. And so all of that mixes in to make, you know, what made for a pretty tough year in FY24. So now, FY25, we're working on that cycle. We took cuts at the Weather Service last year. The grant programs took cuts at FEMA. And so we're now trying to fight to get back to where we were, honestly, and to hopefully maybe even backfill some of the cuts from FY 24 because there might be some opportunities for DHS to reprogram some of the monies that they have and maybe we can get some of that back for grants. We don't know. I mean, we're working on that right now. And then, you know, there might be a supplemental because the Disaster Relief Fund is running out of money very quickly, will run out this summer. So, you know, is there an appetite in Congress for a supplemental to restock the DRF? And if so, does that create opportunities for some other things to be fixed, you know, like grants? I mean, to be honest, there's not a lot of appetite, particularly among House Republicans, for a supplemental. But I don't know how you go through hurricane season without having money in the DRF. And then there are other big ticket items like the bridge collapse in Baltimore. I mean, that's going to be an incredibly expensive project to repair. Where does that money come from? It's probably going to have to come from a supplemental. We're looking at opportunities to take advantage of, or looking to take advantage of opportunities that come our way. But it's a tough environmental Capitol Hill right now.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, to say the least. And I think it's interesting that you brought up the Baltimore Bridge collapse, right? We had met last month with the critical infrastructure folks, and we're certainly seeing a shift, I think, to your point, on some of the critical infrastructure things that are now having to be replaced and repaired. But to your point, where's that money coming from? It doesn't just sit in a bank somewhere and we can kind of pull from it as we need it. I wish it were that simple. That would be incredible. But I certainly think that, and we'll touch on this a little bit as we dive deeper into some of the specific kind of initiatives I think that we're focusing on. But I think that we're certainly gonna kind of see a shift with the frequency of incidents and how we're finding that and how we're finding resources just to keep our day-to-day lives operating, right? I know, Justin, I want to make sure you have an opportunity to jump in here because I know this is something that you're very passionate about. I do want to highlight, we can put it in the show notes, there were the 2024 kind of legislative priorities. And so I don't know, Justin, if you wanted to provide an overview of those and we can kind of plug and play with some of the other initiatives that fit within that scope.
Justin Kates:
Yeah, so just to provide some insight on what these, how this, how this process works. Typically, at the beginning of the year, one of the things that will happen is, you know, they'll appoint the new government affairs chair, and the vice chairs, that leadership will start to convene. They'll start to think through what are some of the key priorities right now. Now, many of these things, as was mentioned earlier, are common issues that we see from year to year. for example, emergency management performance grant. That's an obvious one that every year we want to try and push forward. And this is something that is typically brought forth in our legislative priorities for the year. The legislative priorities, normally there's no more than six or seven. And then those are brought to the board of directors for IAEM-USA. They vote on them and approve them. And what's nice about those legislative priorities is, number one, They certainly give our membership some awareness of the big things that we're going to be pushing forward and pushing hard on over the year, but two, it also enables. the association sort of fast track any letters of support or anything that we need to do there because one of the challenges with dealing with sort of an organization as large as IAEM is there's the bureaucracy of having to get the board of directors to approve letters of support on certain actions and that kind of stuff. when we approve this series of legislative priorities, that already means that the board has approved those items and we can just kind of move forward with those. We don't need to get approval or anything like that. So that's one of the benefits there. You know, in addition to our emergency management performance grant, the National Weather Service is another one of the big ones that we hit on normally each year, just because of our important relationship with them and the important services that they provide to emergency managers. And so that's normally also one of our legislative priorities. And then from there, it'll hit on some of the ones that I think in a lot of cases have high impact to emergency managers, or also some of those that we know are likely to succeed. There's so many pieces of legislation over the year that get proposed by by a variety of representatives and senators. And I think in a lot of cases, it's not really expected they're going to go anywhere. So those are typically not things that we're going to dedicate a whole lot of attention or resources towards. And so, you know, you normally won't find those on these legislative priorities either. But that doesn't mean that as staffers from those representatives or senators come to us and ask for assistance in helping to draft pieces of legislation or want us to review something, we're always open to doing that. And we're always open to try and find some creative solutions as to how we make those bills more likely to succeed. So that's also some of the kind of things, the interface between government affairs and the board of directors and the president, and how we work through some of those issues.
Taylor Frizzell:
Excellent. I think that's helpful context, and I'll take a second to kind of plug. We'll put, like I had mentioned, a link to these priorities in the show notes so that folks know exactly what we're talking about and have a little bit more detail. Because as per usual, I would have 8000 more questions, if I could just sit and berate you folks with questions for hours on end, but I'll refrain.
Thad Huguley:
Yes, then, just to just add on a little bit more to what Justin says, I want to be clear with everybody that this is not intended to be an all inclusive list of being there, there. inevitably that, you know, some of these issues will get hot and then they'll cool off and then something else will pop up and, you know, oftentimes we're having to be reactive. It just depends on what really sort of gets a little traction on Capitol Hill. You know, I mean, I'll give an example of the REAADI Act, you know, which deals with people with functional needs and, you know, That bill is gone. There are times I feel like it's this close to really sort of breaking through and we get something done on that, and then it'll completely disappear for six months, then it'll pop back up. Poor Elizabeth Davis, who is one of our organizational experts on those issues, I can't tell you the number of times I've sort of called with my hair on fire saying hey Elizabeth I need you it looks like it's finally going to start moving and she'll write a memo and she'll get on calls you know with Capitol Hill staff and then everything kind of quiets down again so yeah all that to say you never quite know what is in store you know when you're dealing with Congress but we do try to give just a very broad list of issues that we know that we're going to be following and tracking and hopefully making progress on over the course of the two-year congressional cycle.
Justin Kates:
Schoolhouse Rock made it sound like it's a lot easier when I watched that, so I don't understand how.
Thad Huguley:
It was very misleading. Very, very misleading, but it sure was catchy back when I was a kid.
Taylor Frizzell:
I think we have to rewrite it. Can we make that one of the goals for the Government Affairs Committee? Rewrite that whole thing. We'll get some IAEM members to like do a dance sequence or something.
Thad Huguley:
I don't think you can fit it into a three minute assessment of a cartoon for sure, so.
Taylor Frizzell:
Darn, that would have been great. And I also want to take a second to plug because there are a ton of things to your point that going on on Capitol Hill all of the time, not even just related to emergency management. But I was in preparation of today's episode. I was playing around at IAEM Connect, and I want to give props to both Thad and Mary Jo. They are providing updates on some of these relevant initiatives in IAEM Connect. A couple of the ones that I had pulled out was the AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act, updates on the Fire Victims Tax Relief, just a couple of these initiatives that To your point that might get swooped under the under the rug for a little while and then pop back up when some sort of movements been made on that. So I just want to encourage folks to also utilize that as a resource. for some updates of what's going on with the government affairs.
Thad Huguley:
Thank you, Taylor, for that plug. I do. I do think that that IAEM connect is an incredible resource that's underutilized, in my opinion. I mean, we just there's lots of good information on there. And the more people who are on there and contributing, the more robust that's going to be, the better information people are going to have. So I think, you know, Every opportunity we have to encourage people to participate in that, let's take advantage of that.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
Taylor, to Thad's point on IAEM Connect, that's an opportunity for us to gather stories that people are experiencing, and we can then translate that into letters to Capitol Hill. to advocacy. And it really makes a difference when we can give a detailed story of how a piece of legislation is impacting someone or may impact someone going forward. And those heartfelt stories really matter.
Taylor Frizzell:
That's an excellent segue as well, Mary Jo, because one of the things that I wanted to ask about was how folks can get involved in the advocacy process And something that sounds like as simple as just telling their story and how it might be related to some of these initiatives, I think is a really powerful place to start. But are there any other sorts of ways that emergency managers can get involved in this advocacy process?
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
Well, they can definitely participate on IAEM Connect. I would absolutely encourage that. They can participate in the committee. Reach out to us at govaffairs@iaem.com and, you know, engage with the committee, be part of it, listen in. But also there's an opportunity to be aware of what your region is doing. Talk to your region presidents, get involved in your regional collaboration, make sure that you're communicating together as a group, so that that information can then feed up to the committee and we can share that as well.
Taylor Frizzell:
Excellent. Did you have anything you wanted to add to that?
Thad Huguley:
You know, I think, yes, one thing I would like to mention too is, I mean, we particularly, Travis Cryan, and I have made a very purposeful effort over the last couple of years to reach out to some of the other committees and caucuses within IAEM to try to, you know, make sure they understand that we welcome their input. I mean, they are probably going to hear about a particular emergency management-related policy within their area of expertise. I mean, not necessarily, but there's a good chance they're going to hear about it before we do. And so, if there's a particular issue they want the Government Affairs Committee to be aware of or to be engaged in, For a lot of the caucuses and committees, there's a direct liaison between the Government Affairs Committee and, let's say, Emerging Technology. That's actually where I met Mary Jo. When she was doing Emerging Technology, she was talking to me about an issue that involved driverless vehicles in times of emergencies, when you have mass evacuations and how that should be dealt with. And so she came to me, And we started working on that issue, working it pretty hard there for a while, and then COVID came along and sort of sidetracked that. But, you know, that's just one example. And I mean, there are other cases where somebody's come and said, hey, you know, we really think the government affairs should be engaged on this. And so we tried to reach out to make sure people understand that the door is open. We need people to engage with us and let us know what's important.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
And, oh, Justin, I didn't want to step over you, but really quickly, one thing that we're working on that we're looking for the board to take a look at and comment on and eventually approve is how committee and caucus positions can make it to the Government Affairs Committee and become kind of an official standpoint or position of IAEM. So we are working at another process for those committees and caucuses to directly engage the Government Affairs Committee. And hopefully we'll have some additional work in the coming months with the board to be able to complete that process.
Justin Kates:
So to follow up on that question about advocating, how can emergency managers do a better job at this? One of the things that I've always heard you talk about that I think really is important for folks to be aware of is the importance of bringing elected officials into your EOC or to your exercises, you know, with this intent to build a relationship because it's really tough when some sort of an important piece of legislation ends up popping up and this is the first time you're meeting this person or meeting their staff So maybe talk to us a little bit more about some of those very like grassroots fundamentals that people don't, they might not think are actual advocacy for legislative priorities, but they really do make a difference.
Thad Huguley:
Yeah, 100%. I mean, honestly, I wish every jurisdiction would take a moment to reach out to their elected officials, to their member of Congress and to both their senators, and find time to invite the staffers to come watch an exercise. I don't really need, I mean, it's helpful, but what I really need from people is, emergency managers with IAEM, is to explain to elected officials what you do on a day-to-day basis. And I know, Taylor, we talked, we laughed about this earlier, that, you know, that's sometimes hard to do. But I do think that our elected officials, they know what cops do. They know what firefighters do. They know what first responders do, but they're a little fuzzy about how emergency managers fit into that whole process. And so having them come watch an exercise or to tour an EOC is immensely helpful, immensely helpful. And I'll give a few examples. I know that Mike Evans down in Mobile County, Alabama, about a year ago, I mean, now I got to say they've got a world-class EOC down there. I mean, it is something to see. And so we had Senator Katie Britt from Alabama, who's brand new. I mean, she's just in her first term. I mean, just started, you know, was just elected a year and a half ago. Had her come visit, spend a couple hours, you know, meeting with the team down there, touring this world-class facility. But I mean, that has paid enormous dividends, you know, in working with her staff. And she's actually on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee that funds FEMA. Thank you, Mike Evans, for taking the time to do that. I'll give you another example. Christian Cunnie in Region 1 put together a trip to DC where he got somebody from all of the states in Region 1. They came down to Washington with a set agenda. They went around and talked to most of the elected officials in Region 1 about emergency management and the policy issues that we care about. It was an incredible use of one day to come in and do that. I wish every region would take the template that Christian created and use it. It's not that hard, but it does take some effort to put it all together. And so, you know, those type of engagement with elected officials pays huge dividends. But again, you don't even really have to get into the nuances of the policy. It's really more important for our elected officials to understand what emergency management is. And then, And then once we've got the relationship in place, then we can talk about the details of the policy.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
And Taylor, to Thad's point a little bit, coming from a place where I was doing that kind of work at the city level before transitioning to emergency management, that may be a good place for people to start as well. Get to know your local government affairs rep, and engage with them and learn how they prefer making those contacts if you're a little hesitant about that. And also just it helps to keep them in the loop and they can provide a lot of resources to bring in and engage those elected officials into your community. One other thing I would add is that as you're doing that, let us know what you see and hear as the Government Affairs Committee so that we can be aware of those contacts and how you're engaging with that information. If there's resources that we can provide in terms of basic talking points, we'll work as a committee to try and get those out. Certainly IAEM Connect is one place you can look for some of that information as well.
Taylor Frizzell:
And I'm glad that you had mentioned that Mary Jo, because one of the things that I always want to try and provide folks with some form of resource. And so we're talking about having these conversations with our elected officials at any level of government. If resources don't exist in forms of like letter templates or something, are there any sort of words of wisdom you could offer folks to help maybe make it a little bit less intimidating to start those conversations?
Thad Huguley:
Well, I'll start there and then Mary Jo, please jump in. I mean, we as a committee are going to make a much more purposeful effort to provide resources for members to try to make this as easy as possible. We've done that type of thing in the past, and I'll be honest, the response was not great. I mean, sometimes getting people to take a few minutes to send an email or to make a call is hard because everybody's got busy schedules. But we're going to try again, and I think we're going to be much more aggressive in our communications about how to do this and where the resources are and pushing people, shaming people, whatever it takes to get folks to contact their elected officials. And so, for instance, We have resources on the website related to National Weather Service funding and just, you know, I mean, they're one of our arguably our most important federal partner. to make sure that they have the resources they need to do the job that they do. We will be providing additional resources related to the cuts to the grant programs that we got in FY 24 and trying to get those restored. Those will be coming soon. Sort of a perfect time right now for me to make a pitch to everybody. I mean, just today, We, along with NEMA and Big City Emergency Managers, sent a letter up to Capitol Hill to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees outlining our shared priorities, you know, for FEMA-related priorities and weather service all in the same letter. So it's all in one letter. We want our members to use that as a template to contact their members of Congress and say, hey, this is what we want, this is what we need, and we are the people who are making your constituents safer every day. Heed what we say because we're there to help you. So anyway, I went on a little longer than I intended there. Mary Jo, do you want to add anything to that?
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
No, I think you hit it, that we're working to provide those resources where we can. Of course, we can't tackle every topic, but those that rise to the surface and we can put together, you know, those general talking points, we certainly are making a better effort in that regard.
Thad Huguley:
Taylor, let me say one more thing. I know people find the process intimidating. There's no reason to be intimidated. I mean, you will be calling about a topic that nobody is going, I don't see how you can make it political to ask for money to make communities safer. Now, they may not give it to us, but it's not like you're going to get a lot of pushback from the staffer that you're dealing with when as an emergency manager in a community that the member of Congress they work for represents. I mean, that's a welcome message. That's a good message. That's something that we can all hopefully agree on and support.
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
And Taylor and Thad, feel free to elaborate on this. But I think people get kind of stuck on the etiquette of the letter writing, and what should be included in a letter. And I'm just going to go back to that comment of IAEM Connect, collecting those stories. It's stories that impact your community, and you're letting your elected representative know the impacts that their constituency are going to feel if those resources don't come to that community. be it DRF funding or, you know, our DHS grants or National Weather Service cuts, those things are direct impacts. So if those things are absent from your community, what's the impact and how is it going to relate to that person's tenure as a representative for your organization and for that community? And make those stories heartfelt and specific and your letter writes itself.
Taylor Frizzell:
I think that's a good point. And I think it's something that we come back to not only just from this episode, but throughout the length of the time we've been doing this podcast is to humanize whatever the issue is and meet people as human beings. And I think that that's the part that tends to get lost in what we do on the day to day, because we're all so stressed out about the 8,000 things that are never going to get accomplished. But I think it's an excellent reminder to humanize the issue and humanize the people that you're talking to, because you're right, it's a very impactful thing to do, quite frankly. As we start to kind of wrap up today's session, we've been doing a lot of talking, I think, about future casting throughout the length of these episodes that we've been having here. And so I want to take a minute. Thad, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, and I didn't want to bring it out just then, but when we think about this stuff, technical term, that we're speaking out on in legislation now, advocating for, against, whatever it may be. Do you folks foresee those things changing? The things that we're advocating for against now, do you think that those are going to change in the long term? Or do you think there'll be very similar issues, just maybe framed differently?
Thad Huguley:
I think that's an interesting question, Taylor. I mean, I think for now, things are going to stay largely the same. I mean, ultimately, I think, you know, the policy issues that we're working on are trying, if there's a general theme to those policy issues, it's trying to simplify the process and looking for ways to make it easier for survivors of disasters, you know, after, you know, the unthinkable happens. Yeah, there may, over the longer term, there may be discussions about grants and how those are handed out and whether or not states and locals should be doing more. and the federal government should be doing less, but with the increasing frequency and severity of disasters, I'm just not sure that that's feasible. And I think we're always going to be depending on the federal government for a large portion of the support. But having said that, states, locals, tribal, they handle countless numbers of disasters that never reached the level of the federal government. And I think we've got to do a better job of telling that story too. But, you know, we are living in a time where clearly something's going on with climate change and just, you know, tornadoes and hurricanes. I mean, when Southern California has a hurricane roll through, And, and then all this stuff going on with the border and you know you never know when, I mean, I'm just, I'm thinking about Mary Jo out in California, they have really had a tough year. I just think, I just think there's always going to be a role for the federal government to play in emergency management.
Taylor Frizzell:
Yeah, were those things that you thought you're signing up for Mary Jo, the hurricanes and the
Mary Jo Flynn-Nevins:
Well, fortunately, I'm in Northern California. So my greatest challenge is what they call the second Katrina that could potentially happen in the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta, with failures of levee system. So that is a flood story, I hope not to have to tell in my future, and hope that we provide the mitigation necessary to prevent that kind of calamity. But I think when it comes to, you know, how slow government can move. There are times when we are reacting at a crazy fast pace. And so from a future perspective, I think we're always going to be in that kind of anticipatory mode, where we're looking forward to things that can impact us, like Thad mentioned, the driverless cars. I was hearing about driverless cars one day, and it scared the bejesus out of me that I could have a community that can't get out is relying on Waze or Google Maps and telling them to go into a fire rather than out of a fire. And I can't communicate with that vehicle and that vehicles on autopilot doing its own thing. So that terror translated into, hey, let's talk to folks about it, who are developing policy around the development of that technology. I think we're going to see some of that discussion coming around the advancement of artificial intelligence and how there are great benefits to our industry for artificial intelligence, especially ways that we can engage some of the the writing of disaster messages of alerts and warnings. But that's going to have to be, you know, eventually part of policy. and where we can impact policy as an organization, I think that's where the Government Affairs Committee needs to be poised and ready to help.
Justin Kates:
So we focused a lot on the sort of the interests that IAEM places on Capitol Hill. There's a lot of attention that we place on our work in Washington, D.C. And there's, you know, a lot more that happens in that city. We also, with government affairs that you help facilitate a lot of this, we coordinate frequently with the FEMA leadership to share sort of the issues that we're encountering as emergency managers. And we do this with our partners from NEMA and big city emergency managers. Maybe if you just want to talk a little bit about, you know, that quarterly meeting that we have and some of the things that have have been involved in that over the past few years.
Thad Huguley:
Yeah, so what Justin is alluding to is once a quarter or so, we have a call with the administrator, with Administrator Criswell and her senior leadership team to come together with NEMA and big city emergency managers. We call this the big three meeting. In fact, we have that coming up here in early June that Justin and senior leadership from IAEM will be participating in. And it's just an opportunity for us to share notes and share stories and talk about our point of view on, you know, whatever policy change that FEMA is looking to do, you know, that doesn't require legislation, but maybe some sort of change that they're making, you know, within FEMA, you know, that would have a positive or negative impact on emergency managers. And so just to make sure that the administrator and the highest levels of FEMA leadership are aware of our point of view on these issues. You know, and I want to take this opportunity to say that we work very, very, very closely with NEMA and with big city emergency managers. My counterpart at NEMA is a guy named Matt Cowles, who is just fantastic to work with. you know, he worked on the Senate Appropriations Committee handling the FEMA account when I first met him, you know, seven years ago. And then he came, this was actually his second stint with NEMA. And so, you know, we have a great relationship. I talk to him multiple times a day. You know, we never hide information from each other. There's no competition. There's no pride in who gets credit for something. We just work well together. And I think that emergency management the policy community of emergency management has been better because of that. And, you know, working with big city emergency managers. So all that to say, you know, we've got this meeting coming up here in a couple of weeks. You know, they'll all be there. You know, Justin will be there, you know, with Mark Sloan from big city emergency managers and with Russ Strickland from NEMA. It's great to have our senior leaders working together like that and working directly with, you know, arguably our most important federal partner in FEMA. But in addition to FEMA, we work with the Weather Service, we work with DHS, we work with the Department of Health and Human Services, ASPR, Department of Health and Human Services, any number of different federal partners that touch on emergency management in some form or fashion. FEMA and the Weather Service would be the two biggest, but we have others that we work with as well. I mean, it's a lot to keep up with, but I think with the resources that we have at IAEM and the number of people that we have who are really skilled and talented at working with the federal agencies, I think we do a pretty good job of covering all of our bases.
Justin Kates:
Well, hopefully, as people prepare for Colorado, when we go out for the conference this year. People plan to come out early because I hope that people recognize we have a great government affairs day-long meeting where we have presentations from key officials from Capitol Hill, from other federal agencies, talk about some of the key policy issues that are going on right now. It's a great opportunity for those who are interested in this topic. to for the first time kind of get acquainted with this, meet some of the other folks that are working in this space. So be sure to come out early for the government affairs meeting in Colorado Springs this year. So Taylor, I'll turn it back over to you as we start to wind down.
Taylor Frizzell:
Excellent. Thank you all so much for for joining the podcast. I know I always have to feel like I apologize to folks because I would sit here and talk about these things for hours because I have more questions than is probably healthy. So thank you so much for humoring me and coming to hang out with us this month. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know more about government affairs and how the process works and all of the incredible work that you folks are doing. So thank you, thank you, thank you for all of what you're doing for emergency management as a field, as well as for our membership. I really appreciate it. As we do begin to wind down, as Justin had said, I do want to remind folks, feel free to send in your questions and your comments for us. Um, you can go right to our website, which is just in case podcast, uh, check us out there, provide us any sort of feedback you've got. Uh, the next episode is going live on July 9th. And of course, Justin's going to do his magical stuff in the background and take the transcript from this, um, and put it into the IAEM bulletin articles. You don't have to listen to my voice though. I have been told it sounds like a chipmunk at two times speed in case anyone is looking for something that might cause them. headache. You're welcome for that. Thank you again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next month. Thanks so much for being here, guys.
Justin Kates:
Thank you all. We'll talk to you soon.