No need for NOAA 'shutdown' plans

April 10, 2011
No need for NOAA 'shutdown' plans

By Staff and Wire Reports The Gloucester Daily Times Mon Apr 11, 2011, 01:11 PM EDT

The U.S. Commerce Department, parent wing of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had a 68-page plan for an "orderly shutdown" of the federal government in place.

But neither those plans nor those cast last week by other government agencies proved necessary over the weekend — at least for now.
That's because what some congressional officials called a "historic" 11th-hour Friday night federal budget deal averted a shutdown while setting the stage for cutting billions in government spending.
Working late into Friday night, congressional and White House negotiators finally agreed on a plan to pay for government operations through the end of September while trimming $38.5 billion in spending.

Lawmakers then approved a measure to keep the government running for six more days while the details of the new spending plan are written into legislation this week.
But the approval means that, among other agencies, NOAA's Northeast regional headquarters in Gloucester's Blackburn Industrial Park and U.S. Coast Guard Station Gloucester at Harbor Loop would remain fully staffed and operational today and throughout the week, while government leaders in Washington hammer out terms of a final agreement to run through Sept. 30, the end of the current federal fiscal year.
The showdown toward a potential shutdown at midnight Friday had raised uncertainty as to just how a closure would have impacted Gloucester's and Cape Ann's key federal employers and employees.

NOAA's shutdown contingency plan, for example, called for keeping on 654 employees across the nation within the National Marine Fisheries Service, with half of those agents within the agency's controversial law enforcement wing to guard against alleged "overfishing" and other issues. NOAA sets and enforces commercial fishery regulations for waters from Main to the Carolinas from its Gloucester regional headquarters.
Overall, NOAA was set to grant "exceptions" to 5,709 employees — roughly a third of its full-time federal workforce — to continue working in the event of a federal shutdown, according to the contingency plan.

But the bulk of those continuing employees would be at the National Weather Service, which would keep on 4,016 employees to continue to provide weather forecasts.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard — which has been moved under the wing of the Department of Homeland Security since the last government shutdown hit in early 1996 — was apparenly not pegged to reduce staff or coverage out of Gloucester or anywhere else.
But employees throughout Homeland Security's agencies would have had to work and accrue paychecks — not receiving them until the federal government could get back up and running, according to media reports.
In past years, a federal shutdown would also have meant a suspension of mail service.
Federal and U.S. Postal Service officials, however, said that would not be the case this time because mail service is not subsidized by U.S. tax dollars.

Yet passport applications, processed at the Gloucester post office and many others, would have been delayed or suspended because passports are issued by the State Department.
In Washington, the avoidance of a shutdown was hailed by both sides.
"Americans of different beliefs came together again," President Barack Obama said from the White House Blue Room, a setting chosen to offer a clear view of the Washington Monument over his right shoulder.

The budget agreement that put the brakes on any shutdown was negotiated by Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
But it wasn't until after midnight Friday that White House budget director Jacob Lew issued a memo instructing departments and agencies to continue normal operations.
Boehner said the deal came after "a lot of discussion and a long fight." He won an ovation from his rank and file, including the new tea party adherents whose victories last November shifted control of the House to the GOP.
Reid declared the deal "historic."

The deal marked the end of a three-way clash of wills. It also set the tone for coming confrontations over raising the government's borrowing limit, the spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 and long-term deficit reduction.
In the end, all sides claimed victory.

For Republicans, it was the sheer size of the spending cuts. For Obama and Reid, it was casting aside GOP policy initiatives that would have blocked environmental rules and changed a program that provides family planning services.
Not all policy provisions were struck.

One in the final deal would ban the use of federal or local government funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia. A program dear to Boehner that lets District of Columbia students use federally funded vouchers to attend private schools also survived.
Republicans had included language to deny federal money to put in place Obama's year-old health care law.

The deal, however, now only requires such a proposal to be voted on by the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it is certain to fall short of the necessary 60 votes.
Associated Press material is included in this report.