Norton’s Bill to Name New Coast Guard Headquarters after WW II Medal of Honor Recipient Headed for President’s Signature

WASHINGTON, DC – The Senate yesterday 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. The House passed the bill earlier this month, and it is expected to be signed into law by the President as Coast Guard employees move to the building beginning in August. The Coast Guard headquarters will mark the first time the federal government will locate a federal agency east of the Anacostia River. As the leading Democratic member on the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, Norton took steps to ensure that the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters complex will help reinvigorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, Ward 8's major commercial street.

"The House and Senate have agreed to honor the U.S. Coast Guard by commemorating Douglas Munro's service and heroism, as the Coast Guard desired," said Norton. "I am pleased that the bill will be signed into law just after this week's ribbon-cutting of the new state-of-the-art building. Later this week, Coast Guard employees will move into a building that will be named for one of their own."

Norton, who led a preview tour of the new Coast Guard headquarters for the D.C. community last week and spoke at the building's ribbon-cutting on Monday, secured funding for the 1.1-million-square-foot Coast Guard headquarters. The building 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 31, 2013