U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to shift the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from the Commerce Department to the Interior Department has raised questions about the agency’s role and whether the move would help or hurt its mission, The Washington Post reports.
While some believe Interior, which oversees the nation’s parks and other land holdings along with its wildlife, is a better fit for NOAA than Commerce, which is focused on promoting U.S. business, others fear the agency — which manages weather satellites, commercial and recreational fisheries, and a range of coastal, ocean and atmospheric programs — will lose clout in the move.
“NOAA will be less prominent as one small part of Interior than it is in Commerce,” David Goldston of the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote in a recent blog post. NOAA’s $4.9 billion budget is about 60 percent of Commerce’s overall funding.
READ IT AT: [The Washington Post]