Mark Begich

As the Bering Sea warms up, and it is warmed up very rapidly in the last 30 years or so, it is essentially just thawing those coastal bluffs.

Well, like Newtok is moving, correct?

I will give you one--as I flip over to the Corps here, I will give you an example.

If I am the community, I will use Anchorage here, for example, I got to FEMA.

Now Tribes can request declaration of emergency, instead of waiting for the States.

The way that cost/benefit analysis works really for communities of your size and Vivian's communities, they are too small of populations

So you think that the tools are there, it is just someone needs to help just facilitate it?

Can I ask you this, John, and then again, I apologize, our clock is ticked here, I have some other questions I will submit for the record, that you can prepare from your office that says, 'Here's what we did in that Immediate Action…

Absolutely, I mean, you cited the example of the small remote subsistence harbors.

I would recommend, and this is always--and I know the President has a directive on tribal consultation, to make sure that Tribes are part of this equation.

If we can find the right mix, and it may be that we have to recognize, as we recently did in the piece of legislation, we changed some language

We can fly to the moon, put things on Mars. We can go to the bottom of the ocean. We can drill 5,000 feet under the ocean floor, but when it rains in Washington, you can not get a plane off the ground.

Do you think that idea would be helpful?

They can just push right out the door.

I remember when Hurricane Katrina happened, we could not--he had a heck of a time trying to get the coordination.

What I would say is what we have somewhat lost sight of is the fact that the original intent of these grants was not just to help resource local governments in service to their communities, but to create, really, a nationwide architecture…

I would be very anxious--the danger was for the Chairman of the full Committee to put a former mayor as Chairman of this Subcommittee, because I lived this for many years.

FEMA seems like they could have a real role here.

I just have an additional question on the utility one, and then I have just a thought on snow, and I am going to then move down.

So I urge you, Mr. Chairman, and the members of this important Subcommittee to work with other Members of the House and Senate and the appropriators to ensure that the National Capital Region Office addresses the needs that Congress…

Are we or you measuring them in a way that we can really determine, these grants are working?

With our tight budgets--everyone has them--but it seems like the limited amount of money that goes through that program augments what you are doing locally, the private sector as well as State.

When I was mayor, the city's size, geographic size, was 1,900 square miles, so you can imagine the many different areas we had kind of--it was unified, but it still had communities within that considered themselves small town cities, even…

I understand, where they cannot get to their home because they have four feet of snow.

It just seems those massive parking lots, and they are empty and everyone is jammed up on the--I call it the war for the parking spaces.