I would much rather see these issues worked out at the regulatory level rather than resort to federal legislation. Draft a set of proposed regulations, hold public hearings to get input from the private sector, academic sector, users of specialized forecast products, public citizens and any other interested parties. From Mike Smith's accounts, it does appear there are some instances of bureaucratic bottlenecks in NWS impeding timely flow of information here and there, but these should be management issues, hardly warranting introduction of federal legislation by a U.S. Senator.
As with many first attempts at legistlation, the wording is very broad and therefore open to a wide range of interpretation. For example:
(2) after the issuance of such weather data, information, guidance, forecast, or warning to the public under subsection ©, willfully impart comments or qualifications on such weather data, information, guidance, forecast, or warning, or any part thereof, to the public, except pursuant to an issuance that complies with that subsection.
Now - how could the above be interpreted? Would this prohibit the NHC director from making informal comments and insights on a cable news network when a hurricane threatens the coast? The other day, I was chasing in Iowa. While watching a wall cloud come in, I asked a couple of brief questions of an NWS met who happened to be in the field. In answering my questions, was he imparting 'qualifications' to the official tornado warning in effect at that location, and therefore would be in violation of a federal law were this enacted?
The other interprative problem centers on the "mission" issue. It's easy to say NWS should stick to its mission of "protecting life and property", but - when you think about it - isn't that the ultimate value of virtually all weather information? When a private forecasting firm makes a proprietary 60-day forecast to an agribusiness client considering whether to hedge its position (and thereby protect its assets) with a soybean futures contract, isn't the objective to protect property? Sure, maybe an hourly dewpoint observation may not typically bear on protection of life, but if you or I, as interested weather observers, see an anomaly based on such an observation 40 miles south of an official tornado watch box, and call family in the area to give them a "heads up", suddenly that information takes on a whole new dimension of value.
The basic message of the bill seems to be: just give us the data, and leave the analysis, interpretation, and communication up to us, thank you very much. To me, this says that the NWS must be doing a pretty darn good job of analysis, interpretation, and communication. Perhaps the "value gap" between the publicly available information and the marginal utility provided by private forecasters is shrinking. In the public interest, this is a desirable state of affairs as competition is working to produce better and better products.
I suppose if the NWS were aggressively trying to develop and market specialized products at taxpayer subsidy, we would have a legitimate federal issue here. I simply don't believe this is the case. Like most bureaucracies, I'm sure they are somewhat protective of their database and channels of communication. If there are some problems here that can't seem to be resolved by upper management within the NWS, then fine, let's hold some hearings and propose regulations to correct the problems. But to have this issue debated and resolved by the highest legislative body in the land is overkill, and it is hard not to be skeptical that private self-interest is more at work here than public policy.[/i]
