Rep. Jason Murphey
One of the experiences I have most enjoyed as State Representative has been the role of Vice-Chairman on the House of Representative's Homeland Security Committee.
When designing the new house committee system, house leadership structured the system so that members of the committees could really focus on specialized areas of committee work. They did this by giving the committees both appropriation and policy oversight in their respective areas. It has been exciting to serve as Vice-Chairman of a committee where I could specialize in an area in which there is a core purpose for government involvement.
In this role, I recently joined Oklahoma State Fire Marshal Robert Doke and a delegation of state government and firefighting officials in visiting the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). There we met with FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison. Administrator Paulson was complimentary of the manner in which Oklahoma officials have handled past emergencies and is supportive of the efforts made in developing additional emergency readiness.
One of the reasons for meeting with Paulison related to developing a truly interoperable 800mhz statewide emergency communications system to allow officials in different agencies to communicate with one another. This issue was perhaps the most controversial that our committee considered in the past year.
Read more...Labels: OK Legislator's Blog, Rep. Jason Murphey
Posted at 10/24/2007 08:38:00 AM
