Floor Action

On December 7th, the House passed by voice vote the following bills of interest to the National Park Service:

• H.R. 118 (Frelinghuysen, R-NJ), to authorize the addition of 100 acres to Morristown National Historical Park. The Department supports the bill as passed.
• H.R. 3804 (Tonko, D-NY), the National Park Service Authorities and Corrections Act of 2009. The bill would authorize 10-year extensions for the National Park System Advisory Board and the NPS Concessions Management Advisory Board, standardize the penalties for violations of NPS regulations at military parks and national historic sites, and raise the appropriations ceiling for the Volunteers in the Parks (VIP) program. It would also authorize NPS to enter into an agreement regarding ticket sales with non-profit historic sites at Pearl Harbor, authorize a land exchange to address an access issue on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, and clarify which federal agency is responsible for clearing snow from sidewalks in the District of Columbia. And, it would redesignate the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site as a national historical park, adjust the wilderness boundary at Lava Beds National Monument, and make several technical corrections. The bill was amended to provide additional citations for some of the laws that are amended in the bill. The Department supports the bill as passed.
• H.R. 3388 (Forbes, R-VA), to modify the boundary of Petersburg National Battlefield in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for other purposes. The bill would expand the boundary of the battlefield by 7,238 acres and authorize a transfer of administrative jurisdiction between the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of the Army of a 1.7 acre parcel to accommodate security perimeter fence at Fort Lee Military Reservation. The Department supports the bill as passed.

On December 9th, the House passed H.R. 3603 (Marshall, D-GA), to rename Ocmulgee National Monument as “Ocmulgee Mounds National Monument” to reflect the primary resource of the park. The bill passed by a vote of 419-0. The Department supports the bill as passed.