Readers respond: Santorum bill to rein in NWS all wet

27.04.2005
Von Ken Mingis

Talk about a storm of controversy.

A Computerworld story Tuesday about bill that would stop the National Weather Service (NWS) from offering detailed weather data online for free prompted a flurry of angry responses from a number of readers who feel that the measure is misguided.

And that"s putting it mildly.

"Ah, excuse me, but doesn"t the U.S. government, a taxpayer-funded organization, fund the National Weather Services?" asked Randall Manske of Milwaukee. "And shouldn"t a government-funded organization, designed to serve, inform and protect the citizens of the country that pays for all that high-tech gear and salaries and information, have the right to it?"

To recap, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) introduced a bill earlier this month that directs the NWS not to compete with or duplicate services offered by private weather businesses (see story). The bill came in response to a change of policy implemented in December by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that ended the weather service"s noncompetition and nonduplication policy. NOAA, which oversees the NWS, removed language prohibiting competition with private companies, saying instead that the agency would "give due consideration" to private-sector weather companies as it looks to provide new services online.

Santorum"s National Weather Services Duties Act of 2005 (download PDF) would allow the NWS to continue to prepare and issue severe weather warnings and forecasts designed for the protection of life and property of the general public.

The measure came in response to critics who say the NWS is wrongly competing with private companies that sell detailed and targeted weather information to businesses, farmers and others. Among those critics is AccuWeather Inc., a commercial weather forecasting operation in State College, Pa. -- Santorum"s state.

Asked about the proposal, Barry Myers, a vice president at AccuWeather, said, "We don"t want any special treatment."

But that"s just what readers like Manske and others see Santorum"s bill doing.

"Why should any citizen of the U.S.A. have to pay for information from a private, nongovernment agency?" wrote William J. Jones, of Richland, Wash. "The government agency receives federal monies derived from our taxes and some private company wants to make money by supplying the same information at a cost. Seems like [these] private companies do not need federal protection."

Jones also noted that business is based on selling a product that people are willing to buy.

"Private companies do not need congressional salesmen who happen to be in their position based upon votes from their citizenry and not the private company," Jones wrote. "If one chooses to be a salesman for a private company, relinquish the congressional seat!"

Jason Forst, a senior network engineer, agreed. "Why shouldn"t the public have free and unfettered access to the product of a publicly funded agency?" he said. "And, where do the private weather forecasters get their raw data? I don"t know for sure, but I"d bet they get it, at least in major part, from the NWS, not from their own worldwide network of weather monitoring stations and equipment.

"What would happen if, I, Joe Citizen, wanted a specialized marine or aviation forecast?" Forst wrote. "Would that information still be available from the NWS, or strictly the province of the private forecasters? As long as the public is paying for it, the public should be able to access it in a cheap or free method."

Another reader put it this way: "What you should be reporting is how these private weather companies have lobbied Sen. Santorum to propose a bill that would hide data collected with taxpayer"s money from the taxpayers. That was the original reason that the National Weather Service began releasing the data that they collect. This data belongs to the public!"

Still another showed his annoyance like this: "Is this elected official off his rocker? The public already pays to have these services provided. It"s called taxes. Now Mr. Santorum would like for taxpayers to pay again by subscribing to a weather service."

Or, as Manske summed up in his letter, "Why should only private companies and media outlets get it all, while the rest of us living in the Information Age who -- by the way -- are paying for it, don"t?"