New York senators promote a New York education center

New York’s two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have introduced legislation that would “enhance” the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, a group of seven education and training centers across the U.S. that focus on security matters, by adding an eighth member to the consortium, the State University of New York’s National Center for Security and Preparedness.

“The SUNY campuses provide extraordinary capabilities to help the Nation in the areas of intelligence, infrastructure protection analysis, information sharing, and critical decision making,” says the proposed legislation, S. 3236, which the senators introduced on April 21.

The National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC), a professional alliance sponsored through the National Preparedness Directorate at DHS, is made up of seven members, including the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) in Anniston, AL; the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (New Mexico Tech); Louisiana State University's Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education (National Center for Biomedical Research and Training); Texas A&M University National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (TEEX); the Department of Energy’s Nevada Test Site (NTS); the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI); and the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center at the University of Hawaii (NDPTC).

Each of these organizations has distinguished themselves nationally as experts in chemicals, explosives, radiological/nuclear devices, bioterrorism, counter-terrorism, agro-terrorism, and emergency management systems, says the Consortium’s Web site.

SUNY’s National Center for Security and Preparedness helps leverage the resources of all 64 SUNY campuses to develop homeland security training and apply SUNY’s homeland security research, says the legislation.

The measure was referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.