Juan Salinas II/ Nebraska Examiner
LINCOLN — Nebraska Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Flood introduced legislation this month that would make it harder for National Weather Service employees to be fired.
The bipartisan-backed bill, named the Weather Workforce Improvement Act, would reclassify Weather Service employees as public safety personnel — essentially protecting them from most future administrative hiring freezes and buyouts.
Flood’s legislation was cosponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from Florida, California, Oklahoma, and Illinois. No other members of the Nebraska delegation have yet signed on as cosponsors.
The bill also would allow the agency director a two-year authority to hire meteorologists and other positions deemed critical for the Weather Service, to fill positions that can’t be filled now due to a broader freeze on government hiring.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent,” Flood said. “Everybody wants accurate weather forecasting.”
The proposal comes after a Weather Service office in the Omaha area and other Great Plains offices announced pausing the deployment of weather balloons in April.
Flood and others in the federal delegation reversed that decision after pushing back against the then-Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency cuts — though Flood said last week that the vacancies had started during former President Joe Biden.
The station is launching two weather balloons a day, Flood has said, but the Omaha-area Weather Service office has said it still faces staffing issues.
Flood told the Examiner in April that if his legislation had been in place, “it would never have gotten to the point it is.”
The Weather Service has faced staffing issues long before Trump’s second term, but recent cuts required “urgent action,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Trump Administration fired a total of roughly 600 workers from both agencies in March as it tried to reshape the federal bureaucracy.
DOGE cuts to the Weather Service affecting Nebraska contributed to two forecasting offices that cover some rural parts of western and southwestern Nebraska to no longer monitor local weather around-the-clock.
One office in Wyoming that covers eight counties in the Nebraska Panhandle, and the other in Kansas that forecasts for three counties in the southwestern corner of Nebraska had to find backup during uncovered shifts. Other nearby forecasting offices — dealing with their own staffing problems — have to handle the load.
The Weather Service said last week it had been granted an exemption to Trump’s government-wide hiring freeze to hire 126 people to “stabilize” the department. That is less than a quarter of the cuts made to the agency this year.
Nebraska and local rural weather experts say NWS staffing shortages threaten public safety.
Flood said he hopes to get his proposal amended into a “more comprehensive weather-related bill” for a vote on the House floor. He says it is more challenging to pass a law at the federal level than his time as a state lawmaker, where he served as speaker.
“Passing the law in Congress is like a Rubik’s Cube with 536 squares on it and a lot of different colors,” Flood said during a press call last week.