Members of the joint Senate and House Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee heard more than two hours of testimony at the Gino J. Merli Veterans Center about the pending revision of the Emergency Management Services Code, commonly known as Title 35.
At the center of the discussion were the state’s nine regional task forces and where they fit into the law, which last underwent a major overhaul 20 years ago.
Richard Flinn, director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, told the committee one of the main concerns the revised statute needs to address is the role, operation, organization and activation of the task forces. Although initially focused on counterterrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks, their mission has evolved to encompass a multitude of hazards.
“It’s everything we are faced with every single day,” Mr. Flinn said.
The revisions also must recognize the diversity in how the task forces are structured by providing a “menu” of options for their organization, he said. While some task forces have an operational role, deploying regional resources in an emergency, others function solely as an administrative entity for grants designated for their region.
“We can’t have a cookie-cutter approach that this is the way it’s going to be,” Mr. Flinn said.
Several speakers said the new Title 35 should remove all ambiguity and clearly establish the legal status of the regional task forces so a host county or other entity does not have to act as the fiduciary agent. As it stands now, Robert Kagel, an executive board member of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Regional Task Force, told lawmakers his task force cannot open a bank account or execute a legal document.
“We are a black-ops organization, for lack of a better term,” he said.
Robert Werts, program manager for the Northeast Pennsylvania Regional Counter Terrorism Task Force, which covers Lackawanna and seven other area counties, made a pitch for continued funding for the task forces from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, describing it as essential to their futures.
He pointed to the three bomb teams within the Northeast region — in Scranton, Allentown and Bethlehem — that are each equipped with three bomb suits. The suits cost $38,000 each and must be replaced every seven years.
“If the funding goes away, I can assure you the bomb teams will go away because the municipalities will not pick up that cost,” Mr. Werts said.
Contact the writer:
dsingleton@timesshamrock.com
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