View Senator Rosen’s Full Remarks Here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC), posed several questions to FEMA Administrator nominee Peter T. Gaynor. During her questioning, Rosen asked Gaynor about the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), and the potential for restructuring it in order to meet the safety needs of Southern Nevada communities.
“Right now the Las Vegas Strip is clustered, it’s considered one asset even though there’s more than 35 hotels along the strip. Twenty of the 30 largest hotels in the world are in the Las Vegas Valley, and a single property in Las Vegas at any one time can have over 70,000 employees and tourists.” dijo el Senador Rosen. “But DHS clusters all of these properties as one entity, you count them as only one single asset for the [purposes of the UASI funding] formula.”
“Will you commit to coming to my office to talk about how we can de-aggregate this and look at our assets in a different way?” asked Senator Rosen. “We’re not just one entity on Las Vegas Boulevard.”
BACKGROUND: During a HSGAC hearing earlier this year, Senator Rosen questioned terrorism, international security, and violent extremism experts on the alarming rise of domestic terrorism in the United States. During the hearing, Rosen asked the panel of experts about the current funding formula for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) program as it relates to protecting the Las Vegas Valley and its critical infrastructure from the threat of terrorism, and protecting all Nevadans from the recent rise in mass violence.
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