Okla. Rep. Frank Lucas Pushes For NOAA To Be Independent Agency

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, better known by its acronym NOAA, has been part of the U.S. Commerce Department since its establishment by executive order in 1970. But a member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation is trying to change that.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK3) said the story told on the Hill is that President Richard Nixon decided to put NOAA in the Department of Commerce rather in the Interior Department for purely political reasons; he was supposedly mad at his Interior Secretary, Lucas said, and wanted to get even with him.

Even if there’s only a sliver of truth in that story, Lucas said, it’s enough.

"NOAA should be about science, data collection, and weather forecasting," Rep. Lucas, Chairman of the House Science Committee, said in an interview this week. "I want to get them as far away from the political process as I can."

While headquartered in Washington, NOAA has an especially strong presence in Oklahoma through the National Weather Service and the National Severe Storms Laboratory, located on the OU campus in Norman. Lucas said their work in gathering and interpreting data, and understanding short and long-term weather trends is more important now than ever before.

"Ask any farmer-rancher who’s going through the gyrations we’ve gone through in the last 15 years," said Lucas, a fifth-generation rancher from Cheyenne, OK. "Ask anybody in the energy industry who is trying to decide how much natural gas to produce in the winter or summer."

Lucas argued that reorganizing NOAA as an independent agency — he said, think about NASA — would allow for operations to be streamlined and, importantly, give it its own budget that couldn’t be tapped by the Secretary to help fund other unrelated components of the sprawling Commerce Department.

"Let NOAA be a weather organization," Lucas stated, "not under the thumb of whoever happens to be the cabinet secretary."

At a Science Committee hearing in April, three former NOAA administrators testified in favor of Lucas‘s plan; Democrats on the committee are also generally in support. But NOAA accounts for more than half of the Commerce Department’s budget and Lucas acknowledges he’s getting pushback from its leadership, as well as from some in the Senate.

Still, Lucas is confident it’s the right thing to do.

"I’ve got to convince some people," he smiled. "I’m persistent, I’ll wear them down."

According to congressional research, there have been more than a dozen prior efforts to pass a NOAA organic act.