[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 6286 Introduced in House (IH)]








109th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 6286

To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to complete and submit a 
master plan for a headquarters location in the District of Columbia or 
                      elsewhere, within 360 days.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           September 29, 2006

  Ms. Harris introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                     Committee on Homeland Security

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To require the Secretary of Homeland Security to complete and submit a 
master plan for a headquarters location in the District of Columbia or 
                      elsewhere, within 360 days.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Department of Homeland Security 
Stabilization and Security Enhancement Act of 2006''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

    Congress finds the following:
            (1) Congress debated an appropriate location to house 
        leadership elements of the Department and ultimately 
        transferred the Nebraska Avenue Complex (NAC) facilities, 
        located in northwest Washington, DC, from the Navy to the 
        jurisdiction, custody, and control of the Administrator of 
        General Services to accommodate the leadership of the new 
        Department under Public Law 108-268.
            (2) Congress contemplated that the NAC would be a temporary 
        station for the Department's leadership due to security 
        concerns.
            (3) There is dispute whether Public Law 108-268 was 
        intended to establish an official Department headquarters at 
        all. There is no occurrence of the term ``headquarters'' in 
        Public Law 108-268 other than in the long title, which has no 
        legislative effect, and Members of Congress expressed direct 
        opposition to such a notion in floor debates.
            (4) The NAC was chosen as the initial leadership station 
        because it included preexisting infrastructure and basic 
        security measures that would allow the new Department's 
        leadership to become adequately operational in a short period 
        of time.
            (5) The security of the NAC remains a serious concern, 
        especially in light of security breaches and lapses.
            (6) Some discussions and concrete steps have been taken to 
        move the headquarters of at least one component of the 
        Department, the Coast Guard, to the West Campus of St. 
        Elizabeth's Hospital. These discussions have contemplated 
        moving other leadership components of the Department to St. 
        Elizabeth's Hospital at an unknown time in the future.
            (7) St. Elizabeth's Hospital was founded by Congress in 
        1852 and opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the 
        Insane, more commonly referred to as an ``insane asylum''.
            (8) As recent as 2002, according to the National Trust for 
        Historic Preservation, St. Elizabeth's Hospital was one of the 
        ``11 Most Endangered Places'' and ``is crumbling''.
            (9) St. Elizabeth's Hospital has been considered for a 
        headquarters location for components of the Department because, 
        according to a statement of administration policy, dated May 
        25, 2006, the ``facility has been identified by the General 
        Services Administration as the only federally owned secure 
        campus readily available in Washington, D.C.''.
            (10) Congress has suspended the Coast Guard's plans to 
        relocate to St. Elizabeth's Hospital because of the lack of 
        sufficient planning, inadequate coordination with appropriate 
        congressional oversight committees, and an overall haphazard 
        approach.
            (11) Under sections 71 and 72 of title 4, United States 
        Code, headquarters of Federal Government agencies and 
        departments are generally required to be located in the 
        District of Columbia absent a statutory exemption.
            (12) In the past, Congress has granted waivers from such 
        requirement to agencies and departments that, due to national 
        security concerns, require enhanced security and additional 
        space and, therefore, should consider locating outside the 
        District of Columbia. Such waivers have been granted, for 
        example, to the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence 
        Agency, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
            (13) The Department of Homeland Security, like the 
        Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the 
        Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is a Federal entity with a 
        critical national security mission. The rationale for 
        relocating those entities should be considered in establishing 
        a new headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security.
            (14) The Department of Homeland Security remains a young 
        Federal entity and should begin to pull together its disparate 
        parts into a single secure location in order to stabilize the 
        Department to make it more effective.
            (15) It is desirable, given its critical mission, to give 
        the Department the space and resources it needs to ensure the 
        safety of its employees, to ensure the security and stability 
        of the Department, to improve integration among its agencies, 
        and to make it more effective for the ultimate purpose of 
        securing the homeland and protecting the American people.
            (16) Given the critical national security mission of the 
        Department, it should establish a permanent home, either inside 
        or outside of the District of Columbia, that enables it to more 
        effectively carry out its mission.
            (17) The Department's headquarters should be a new 21st 
        century complex tailored to the specific needs of the 
        Department and should, among other things, be secure in all 
        respects, contain superior physical, technological, and 
        communicative infrastructure, include a working environment 
        conducive to high productivity, be accessible to personnel, 
        capitalize on modern technologies, and provide enough physical 
        space for future expansion.

SEC. 3. AUTHORITY TO DETERMINE LOCATION FOR HEADQUARTERS OF THE 
              DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

    (a) In General.--Title I of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 
U.S.C. 111 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following:

``SEC. 104. HEADQUARTERS OF THE DEPARTMENT.

    ``(a) Purpose.--The purpose of this section is to strengthen and 
stabilize the Department and make it more effective by pulling together 
disparate leadership components into a permanent and more secure 
location.
    ``(b) Master Plan.--The Secretary and the Administrator of General 
Services, within 360 days after the date of the enactment of this 
section, shall jointly complete and submit a comprehensive master plan 
for the establishment of a 21st century permanent headquarters for the 
Department in the District of Columbia or elsewhere, to the Committee 
on Environment and Public Works, the Committee on Commerce, Science, 
and Transportation, and the Committee on Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs of the Senate, and the Committee on Homeland 
Security and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the 
House of Representatives.
    ``(c) Permanency.--The master plan shall be designed as a permanent 
solution to establishing the Department's headquarters.''.
    (b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of contents in section 1(b) of 
such Act is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 103 
the following:

``Sec. 104. Headquarters of the Department.''.
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