Dear Editor,
Setting the Record Straight: Why Is JACL Supporting “Special Interest Legislation”?
In the Oct. 8-21, 2021, edition of the Pacific Citizen, Floyd Mori asks JACL members to support HR 1931, which would provide a $10 million grant to be awarded to a Japanese American museum, extend the authorization for appropriations for the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program (Public Law 109-441) and repeal the existing sunset provision.
As the chief legislative strategist and national coordinator of the Japanese American National Heritage Coalition that worked for the creation and funding of the initial grant program, I cannot support passage of HR 1931 as currently drafted. Mori fails to disclose in his article that the proposed $10 million grant would be awarded to only one Japanese American museum located in proximity “. . . to cities with populations that include not less than 100,000 Japanese Americans, as certified by the most recent census.” (See HR 1931, Section 3(e)(2)). Only two metropolitan areas would meet this requirement — Greater Honolulu Combined Statistical Area and Greater Los Angeles Combined Statistical Area — according to population data as of Oct. 13, 2021.
Using reauthorization of the Confinement Sites grant program to promote “special interest” legislation to benefit only one geographically limited population of the Japanese American community is fundamentally in conflict with the organizing principle under which the 33 member organizations of the Japanese American National Heritage Coalition worked in creating and funding the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program.
We succeeded in creating a competitive federal grant program so that any grassroots group could apply for assistance to tell their story without any built-in legislative preference given to any group or geographic area.
Mori is now using a proposed amendment of the authorization for appropriations provision as a subterfuge to ask the JACL membership to support new legislation that would promote the financial interests of only one geographic area of the Japanese American community.
You should know what you are buying if you answer Mori’s call for support. You would only be supporting a new $10 million grant program that would benefit the Honolulu or Los Angeles area.
HR 1931 is not needed to continue the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. Even if the grant program is funded to the full level of its $38 million authorization, the grant program would continue, so long as Congress continues to fund it.
Congresswoman Doris Matsui has been the leading advocate in Congress every year since the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program was enacted to ensure that the program was funded even in years when the president’s budget included no funding for the program.
It is irrelevant that an authorization provision has reached any limitation in amount or time but has not been amended by reauthorization. Once Congress starts to fund an authorized program, the federal government fully recognizes the legal rule that an appropriation act carries its own authorization. In short, there is no need to pass HR 1931 to continue the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program.
If Mori wants to support a new $10 million grant program to be awarded to a Japanese American museum located in either the Honolulu or Los Angeles area, he should be straight forward and advocate for a separate bill to accomplish this rather than embedding it with a misleading, implicit argument that the authorization for appropriations provision must be reauthorized to continue the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program.
Sincerely,
Gerald Yamada
Vienna, Va.
