Congress headed off for its traditional two-week Easter recess last week with a sizable to-do list of important policy items left hanging.
First and foremost, Congress and the White House need to come to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, the statutory limit on how much the federal government can borrow to pay for obligations it had incurred in the past. The Treasury Department is estimating that the government will exhaust its borrowing authority by August without an increase in the debt ceiling.
House Republicans have indicated they will not support a debt ceiling increase without an agreement to cut spending, but have for the most part ruled out cutting defense spending or entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. That means that any budget cuts would have to come from what’s known in DC as “non-defense discretionary spending,” meaning the alphabet soup of domestic programs from NASA to HUD to National Parks and preservation. Democrats, meanwhile, have called for a “clean” debt ceiling increase, arguing that the consequences of the federal government defaulting are so enormous that lifting the ceiling should not be dependent upon negotiating other policy items. Talks on the way forward are currently at a standstill.
Regardless of how the debt ceiling debate proceeds, Congress is beginning the arduous task of developing funding levels for federal agencies and programs for the next fiscal year that starts October 1. In line with their demands for spending cuts, House Republicans are calling for spending in the next fiscal year to be reduced to 2022 levels, which would mean, for example, a nearly $30 million reduction in the Historic Preservation Fund.
Notably, some Republicans have floated the idea of agreeing to a debt ceiling increase in exchange for passage of permitting reform, which could impact the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).
Both NEPA and Sec. 106 would be impacted by legislation the House passed right before the Easter recess. H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, would, among other things, codify into law reforms made to NEPA by the Trump administration in 2020, which were subsequently rescinded by President Biden when he assumed office; and exempt from Sec. 106 oil and gas exploration, or for geothermal and production activities, on non-federal land where the U.S. owns less than 50% of the subsurface mineral estate and there is a state permit. Although the bill is not expected to pass the Senate, the pressure for some kind of permitting reform to speed up infrastructure and energy projects persists.
Speak up for the Profession!
Federal spending on preservation programs and permitting reform are two of the key issues that ACRA members will bring to their elected representatives during ACRA’s annual Capitol Hill Fly-In April 25-26, 2023. For the first time since the pandemic began, ACRA members are going to meet with their House and Senate representatives in person in Washington, DC.
ACRA will arrange meetings and provide training beforehand. There is no cost to register for the Fly-In, but attendees are responsible for making your travel and lodging accommodations. To join your fellow CRM professionals in advocating for the industry, please sign up by Friday, April 14.
ACRA Needs Your Input
The Interior Department has proposed new regulations that impact CRM. ACRA is preparing comments to the Department, and invites members to offer their perspectives:
- The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is proposing to require archaeological report be submitted with any oil and gas exploration or development plan that lessees and operators submit for activities proposed on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).
Currently, an archaeological report is required only if the plan covers an area that a BOEM Regional Director has reason to believe may contain an archaeological resource. The proposed rule would increase the likelihood that archaeological resources are located and identified before they are inadvertently damaged by an OCS operator, thereby assuring compliance with Section 106.
BOEM is accepting comments on the proposed rule until April 17, 2023. The ACRA Government Relations Committee is reviewing the rule, and welcomes any input from ACRA members about the rule. Please send any feedback on the proposed rule to Executive Director Amanda Stratton no later than April 14, 2023.
If you wish to comment directly to BOEM, visit the Federal Register listing and click on the green “Submit a Formal Comment” button.
- The National Park Service (NPS) has proposed updates to the National Register of Historic Places’ “National Register Bulletin 38: Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties” and is seeking public comments on its revisions. First issued in 1990, the TCP Bulletin provides guidance on nominating buildings, structures, objects, sites, and districts believed to have traditional cultural significance for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. The Bulletin was last updated in the 1990s, although there was an effort to revise it that was stalled in 2017. NPS is now relaunching that effort, having further refined the 2017 draft last October (you can read the revised draft here.)
ACRA’s Government Relations Committee is reviewing the revised Bulletin draft to determine what if any comments it should provide to NPS. As such, the Committee is seeking feedback from ACRA members to inform its comments.
Please send any feedback on the draft revised TCP Bulletin to Executive Director Amanda Stratton no later than April 15.
If you wish to comment to NPS directly on the revised Bulletin, the deadline for submissions is April 30. You can comment here.