House Passes Norton Bill to Name New Coast Guard Headquarters after WW II Medal of Honor Recipient

WASHINGTON, DC – The House this evening passed Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton's (D-DC) bill to name the new U.S. Coast Guard headquarters on the St. Elizabeths West Campus the "Douglas A. Munro Coast Guard Headquarters Building," for Signalman First Class Munro, the Coast Guard's only Medal of Honor recipient, who died heroically during a volunteer assignment in World War II. Norton said she is particularly pleased that the bill is well on its way to get through the Congress in time for the opening of the Coast Guard building in the District of Columbia's Ward 8 later this month. Norton, who is working to get the bill through the Senate before the building's ribbon cutting, believes that, like the House, the Senate will quickly move the bill. The Coast Guard headquarters will mark the first time the federal government will locate a federal agency east of the Anacostia River. The St. Elizabeths campus, which will include the Coast Guard headquarters along with the headquarters of other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies, is expected to reinvigorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, Ward 8's major commercial street.

"Just one week after we got the bill voted out of committee, I was delighted to manage our bill on the House floor to name the new Coast Guard headquarters for Douglas Munro, as the Coast Guard requested," said Norton. "Honoring Munro today is particularly appropriate for the new state-of-the-art building, the first the Coast Guard has owned. Munro's heroism will help Americans take note of the many valiant acts of the U.S. Coast Guard that go unrecognized."

Norton secured funding for the 1.1-million-square-foot Coast Guard headquarters, on the St. Elizabeths West Campus, which will house 3,700 Coast Guard civilian and military employees. For fiscal year 2014, Norton successfully urged the President to include $367,031,000 for continued construction of the consolidated DHS headquarters on the West Campus, indicating the Administration's ongoing support of the complex of several buildings and its recognition of the long-term cost savings that come from consolidating agencies and moving them from leased office space into federally owned space. Also included in the President's fiscal year 2014 budget is Norton's request for $9.8 million for D.C. to jumpstart redevelopment of the St. Elizabeths East Campus, where one of the DHS buildings is to be located, a valuable anchor for the D.C.-owned side of St. Elizabeths.

Published: July 16, 2013