Register now and join us Jan. 28 – 30, 2024 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas for NAPO’s 35th Annual Police, Fire, EMS & Municipal Employee Pension & Benefits Seminar.
NAPO highlighted the priority legislation that was signed into law in 2023 – the 9/11 Responder and Survivor Health Funding Correction Act and Joint Resolution Disapproving of the Action of the District of Columbia Council in Approving the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022 and several priority bills that have been passed by the House or Senate in 2023.
Since 2023 is an election year, the House and Senate are scheduled to recess for the months of August and October to campaign and will return to a lame duck session after the Nov. 5th elections. Presidential
and election politics will certainly play a role in what gets accomplished this year. House Republicans will be down to just a two vote majority come Jan. 21, with the retirement of Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH), making it even more difficult to move legislation. On Jan. 19, 2024 the first batch of government funding runs out, and on Feb. 2, the second package of fiscal 2024 appropriations bills expire. That leaves little time for House and Senate appropriators to come to an agreement on final appropriations for each of the twelve spending measures. Another short-term continuing resolution will most likely be needed to avoid a government shutdown.
On Dec. 18, 2023, pursuant to Executive Order 14074 on police reform, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) for federal law enforcement officers. For state and local law enforcement, the DOJ is working with the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST) to expand upon its National Decertification Index (NDI), which currently only reports those officers who have been decertified. IADLEST’s requests for proposals for the NDI expansion project are due Feb. 5.
On Jan. 10, NAPO met with staff of the sponsors of the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), Representatives Garret Graves (R-LA) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), to discuss next steps to pass this important bill. The Social Security Fairness Act would totally repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which negatively impact public employees’ Social Security benefits. The response to NAPO’s request for submitted comments to the House Ways and Means Committee regarding how our members are impacted by the WEP and GPO was significant with a record 800-plus written submissions. We are grateful to everyone who took the time to write down their story. We continue to push the Committee to markup H.R. 82, which has 303 bipartisan cosponsors. You can check here to see if your Senators are cosponsors of S. 597. If they are not, please consider contacting them to urge them to cosponsor the bill.
On Jan. 11, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on “Stopping the Flow of Fentanyl: Public Awareness and Legislative Solutions”, which focused largely on Ranking Member Tim Scott’s (R-SC) and Chairman Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) Fentanyl Eradication and Narcotics Deterrence (FEND) Off Fentanyl Act (S. 1271) to bring the issue and the bill back to the forefront in the hopes of quickly moving it through the Senate. The Committee marked up and approved this bill in July 2023 and NAPO worked to get it included as part of the Senate-passed Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) but, it was removed from the final bill.
NAPO’s updated “Sponsor/Cosponsor” spreadsheet and latest “Legislative Positions” document are available on the NAPO website. Find out how your representatives and senators voted on NAPO’s priority legislation by reviewing NAPO’s Legislative Scorecard for the First Session of the 118th Congress, also available on NAPO's website under Washington Report.
For complete details on these and other legislative issues, please click here for the Jan. 12, 2024 Washington Report.
