Interagecy Relationship

Presentation

Authority of State and Local Government

In recent decades, emergency management and homeland security practitioners have laid claim to a widely accepted declaration: All disasters are local. The core principle expressed in this statement is that—regardless of the size of the geographic region affected by a catastrophic event; the event’s complexity; or the number of people injured, killed, or displaced—the local first response community is the leading force of emergency response. This suggests that, operationally, disaster management, or incident management, is predicated upon a bottom-up approach, rather than a top-down management style.

Disasters may affect an entire county, state, or region within a nation, but it is at the community level that response and recovery take place. For instance, the first responders at the scene are going to have the greatest effect on the outcome of the incident they are trying to mitigate. In the scope of a disaster, it is the cumulative effect of hundreds or even thousands of local first responders, each managing one piece of the disaster, that leads to the incident’s resolution.

America is not comprised of homogenous state and local governments; rather, the nation consists of a patchwork of different types of governments. In some instances, the state government has greater authority over local governments, whereas in others, local governments have tremendous independent authority to govern and act. The latter examples are referred to as home rule states. In a home rule state, local government has supremacy for incident management, with support being provided by the state when requested. However, even that particular definition has issues that must be understood and navigated by the homeland security practitioner.

Whether or not home rule is in effect, each state’s constitution establishes the relationship that the state government has with its local jurisdictions. Citizens within each jurisdiction determine what their local government will include. The following are examples:

· Texas contains towns and cities, but most of the power, authority, and responsibility rest at the county level, with county judges as the chief elected officials.

· Massachusetts, on the other hand, has counties on its maps and uses those geographic definitions for various activities; however, there are no county-level governments.

· New York has 62 counties and more than 1,800 local government jurisdictions, each having considerable authority, and these often overlap.

The style of government that a citizenry has chosen to create over the decades is what determines the varying level of authority among jurisdictions. There are states where the citizens do not prefer much government involvement and others where the citizens have decided that they do.

Regardless of where a state falls along the spectrum of degree of local government involvement, state and in most cases county governments provide public safety services that, by their legislatively mandated charters, have authority and responsibility to perform services and enforce laws and regulations within various jurisdictions. For instance, as noted, New York is a home rule state. The citizens have repeatedly determined that they wish to have many local governments rather than cede power to a geographically larger political division. Despite this, the New York State Police (NYSP) has authority and responsibility granted by the New York state legislature to enforce the laws of the state in every jurisdiction, regardless of the presence of a county sheriff’s office or local police department.

Several other state-level departments hold legislative authority as well:

· Departments of Health

· Departments of Education

· Departments of Environmental Conservation

· Departments of Tax and Finance

Every state has similar agencies or departments that have some authority and responsibility to act within a local political subdivision. Understanding this complicated patchwork of government agencies is important because homeland security practitioners, to be successful, must understand the environments in which they operate.

Article

Operating Environments

The definition of operating environment, a term generally used by the military and public safety officials, is the entirety of the problem space in which homeland security professionals must develop, execute, and achieve their missions. Too often, public safety officials examine their operating environment solely from the perspective of the tactical level. At that level, the data points that must be understood to achieve mission success are generally obvious.

For example, to the firefighter working to mitigate a house fire, the operating environment would include the following details of the structure:

· Construction style

· Age

· Roof pitch

· Number of windows

· Purpose/use of the property

The operating environment in this example could also include the following:

· Fire condition

· Weather

· Available resources

· Exposures (e.g., how close is the house next door or garage?)

· Water supply

Frequently, emergency managers find themselves having to understanding all of the tactical-level data points, but because their responsibility exceeds just the fire and extends to the well-being of the larger community, they must also understand the various issues from a broader standpoint. Examples of these broad issues might include the following:

· Cascading consequences of the road being closed

· Power being shut down to a neighborhood or regional public safety force because of commitment to this incident

· Based upon the use of the structure (e.g., residential versus commercial), the loss of use of the structure on the normal operations of the community

What an emergency manager must also understand about an operating environment are the authorities and responsibilities of the various agencies and jurisdictions involved in the response. In the example of the structure fire, those issues are rarely problematic (although competition between local emergency service organizations can periodically be territorial and contentious). Navigating political and jurisdictional issues can become complicated, however, when an incident’s damage affects a wide geographic area, thus greatly broadening the number of jurisdictions and agencies involved, or when the incident dynamics mandate the response by different levels of government agencies.

Article

Article: NRF Structure of Strategy and Policy

Federal assistance: Figure 1. Overview of Stafford Act support to states. (2008, January). Retrieved July 27, 2009, from the FEMA Web site: http://www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nrf/nrf-overview.pdf

Article

Understanding Regional Structure

Imagine the fictional county of Enderton, which is located in a home rule state.

Enderton County

· Enderton County is comprised of 26 local jurisdictions: 10 towns, 14 villages, and 2 cities.

· The cities each have their own career police, fire, and EMS departments.

· The towns and villages have volunteer fire and EMS services.

· A few of the towns have part-time police officers but no full-time service.

· The county has a sheriff’s office, which provides jail services, a civil department, and a road patrol for policing the areas outside of the cities.

· The state police operate a satellite substation within the county and have several patrols at any given time as well.

· Public safety answering point services (911 dispatch) are provided through a centralized, county-run dispatch center, which provides service to all public safety agencies, regardless of their home jurisdiction.

Now, take a few moments to think about the following questions. Considering possible responses to these questions will assist you in future regional emergency operations activities.

· If you were the regional emergency manager for Enderton County, what challenges do you foresee in terms of preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery? Think about the number of individual agencies.

· How might you facilitate communications among the different agencies of Enderton County? Would you use cell phones, radios, Internet, or SMS (text) messages? What would be the advantages and disadvantages of each technology?

· What communication policies would you strictly enforce? Why?

· Consider the operating environments for the various disasters in Enderton County. What impacts might the disasters have on planning and resource allocation?

Activity

Ask an Expert: U.S. NORTHCOM Support for Homeland Security

Click on the following link to view the video:

U.S. NORTHCOM Support for Homeland Security

Eugenio Pino

Gene Pino is Command Director for Joint Training and Exercise at North American Aerospace Defense Command and the United States Northern Command.

Activity

NIMS Resource Center

Click on the link provided to navigate to FEMA’s official National Incident Management System (NIMS) resource center.

National Incident Management System (NIMS) Resource Center

Resource Links

 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (http://www.dhs.gov) Official Web site of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (http://www.fema.gov/) Official Web site of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Contains information on types of disasters, planning, recovery, rebuilding, and federal assistance.

 U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center. Global War on Terrorism. (http://cpc.au.af.mil/) Topical clearinghouse of reference material including a series of links to government agencies.

 War on Terror (http://www.globalissues.org/issue/245/war-on-terror) This Web site addresses global issues, including the topics with regard to the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

 The Problems With the Department of Homeland Security (http://www.thebulletin.org/) In the search field, search for The Problems With the Department of Homeland Security and then click on the link with the same title. This is an article on internal issues of the Department of Homeland Security and conflicts among its agencies.

 Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/15271?fromSearch=fromsearch&id=3564) The view the document, click on the PDF link after the bulleted text. The act was designed to facilitate government-wide coordination of federal, state, and local agencies for carrying out their emergency management responsibilities.