As 2023 nears its ending, ACRA looks back at some of the past year’s biggest federal policy developments, how ACRA advocated on behalf of CRM, and how they could impact the industry for years to come.
- Chaos on the Hill . . .
On Capitol Hill, the year started with controversy and discord, as it took the new Republican majority 15 votes to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House.
And from there, things got even more chaotic. After narrowly avoiding both a first-ever government default in June and a government shutdown in October, a renegade group of House GOP members voted with all Democrats to kick McCarthy out of the Speaker’s chair (he’s since announced he is leaving Congress altogether at the end of the year). Congress sat paralyzed for 22 days as Republicans struggled to pick a replacement, eventually settling on relatively unknown Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson.
On top of that, the House expelled a member for only the sixth time in U.S. history, booting scandal-plagued George Santos (R-NY) from the body, and tied a record by censuring three Democratic lawmakers. All the drama left little time for legislating: 2023 was the least productive year for the House in modern history.
The Senate, which normally works at a snail’s pace, was positively bustling by comparison, although it, too, could not escape stormy seas, as Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R) spent most of the year blocking military promotions in protest over Pentagon abortion policies before relenting in December.
- . . . as the Executive Branch Churned On
Even as Congress struggled to get its act together, the third year of the Biden administration brought a number of regulatory actions impacting CRM. With the input from ACRA members, ACRA helped shape regulatory actions in 2023 through public comments on a range of topics, including:
- The U.S. Army’s Pre-1919 Historic Housing Program Comment Plan and their Program Comment on Vietnam War Era Housing
- ACHP’s draft Policy Statement on Housing and Historic Preservation
- BLM’s Public Lands Rule to put conservation and recreation on an equal footing with grazing and resource extraction.
- The National Park Service’s proposed revisions to National Register Bulletin 38: Guidelines for Evaluating and Documenting Traditional Cultural Properties and their proposed rules outlining a systematic process under NAGPRA for the disposition and repatriation of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony.
- The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) proposed rule requiring archaeological reports to 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).
- The White House Council on Environmental Quality’s proposed National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rule.
- Renewing and Strengthening the Historic Preservation Fund
The year brought a cloud of uncertainty to the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF), the federal government’s primary vehicle for financing preservation work at the state, local and Tribal levels. On the plus side, the fiscal year 2023 appropriation, signed into law early in the year, provided a record annual appropriation to the Fund. But Congress later allowed the Fund’s authority to expire at the end of September, meaning that it can no longer receive funds from Outer Continental Shelf extraction royalties.
Renewing and strengthening the HPF has been a top priority for ACRA and its allies in the preservation community. In the Spring, a bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced legislation to reauthorize the Fund for 10 years and increase its authorized amount by $100 million per year. H.R. 3350 was introduced by Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the co-chairs of the Historic Preservation Caucus. In June, ACRA and more than 30 preservation organizations wrote to Congress in support of the bill.
Although H.R. 3350 did not move forward in 2023, the preservation community is working side by side with the bill’s authors to see it become law in 2024.
- A Framework for Modernizing the Secretary’s Interior Qualifications Standards
The Secretary of the Interior Professional Qualification Standards play a vital role in delineating the minimum qualifications required for many of the undertakings upon which CRM firms work. But the last time they were updated, Ronald Reagan was president, and Billy Joel was at number one on the Billboard charts.
In recent years, the Interior Department has been discussing the possibility of making changes. Last Spring, the ACRA Board authorized the formation of a Task Force to explore how ACRA can best represent its member firms in any future debate about, or proposed changes to, the Standards. The 23 members of the Task Force developed a set of nine broad principles that ACRA will use to ensure that any changes, should they be proposed, are consistent with the industry’s values and positions.
- Continued Pressure on Permitting
When Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, one of their top priorities was to speed up the permitting process to enable infrastructure projects to move forward faster. In fact, permitting was such an imperative for the new majority that it was a key feature of their first bill, H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act.
Sponsored by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), the bill would make significant changes to permitting laws, in some cases weakening NEPA and excluding certain projects from Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA).
Recognizing the potential harm that H.R. 1 would do to the nation’s preservation laws, ACRA joined with its allies in the preservation community on a letter to Congress expressing its opposition to the bill. While the bill did pass the House, it died in the Senate. But the effort to exempt protects from NEPA and Section 106 continues.
Advocates of quickening the federal permitting process won a small victory when language was included in legislation to avoid a debt default to require that Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) and Environmental Assessments (EAs) under NEPA be completed within two years and one year, respectively. And broader changes, including plans to codify the Trump Administration NEPA reforms into law, may still be in the cards for 2024, which is why ACRA and its allies continue to educate policymakers on the importance of Section 106.
- Bringing CRM to the Hill
CRM professionals came to Washington last Spring for ACRA’s 2023 Capitol Hill fly-in, the first time ACRA members have met with their elected federal representatives in person since before the pandemic. And their message was clear: investing in preservation is a win-win for everyone.
In their meetings, ACRA members urged their House and Senate representatives to act on these issues:
- Striking a balance between accelerating infrastructure projects and the need to protect and preserve our historic properties and assets through the Section 106 process.
- Passing a long-term reauthorization for the Historic Preservation Fund and increasing its authorized level to help states, communities and Tribes continue protecting the places that tell our nation’s story.
- Providing $225 million for the Historic Preservation Fund for fiscal year 2024 to help states, communities and Tribes facilitate preservation projects and Section 106 reviews.
ACRA is planning another Capitol Hill day in 2024 – stay tuned for more details soon.
- ACHP Chair Meets With ACRA in Indy
Newly confirmed ACHP Chair Sara Bronin traveled to Indianapolis last September to provide the keynote address at ACRA’s Annual Conference.
Bronin provided an update on the ACHP’s two recent policy statements on Climate Change and Historic Preservation and Burial Sites, Human Remains, and Funerary Objects; and spoke about the work being done on two new policies, Indigenous Knowledge and Housing. (She also shared that the last time she was in Indy was as a child, when during a family road trip her father drove the family Suburban onto the Indianapolis 500 race track for a lap.)
- The Next Election Looms
Through all the policy debates and Capitol Hill controversies of 2023, politics remained a constant presence, as the 2024 election looms ahead.
Next November, the White House, every House seat and a third of Senate seats are up for grabs in what is expected to be a contentious and bitter fight for power. With Democrats holding a narrow majority in the Senate and the GOP holding a narrow edge in the House, control of Congress could go either way. And with a rematch between the 45th President, Donald Trump, and the 46th, incumbent Joe Biden, looking increasingly likely, it’s anyone’s guess who will be taking the oath of office on January 20, 2025.
Regardless of the outcome, ACRA will continue fighting for the CRM industry with the active engagement of its members, reminding whoever wins in 2024 about the critical role that CRM professionals play in respecting our past while building for the future.