By Carrie Crawford
MSNHA director
In February, I traveled to Washington, D.C., for the annual Alliance of National Heritage Areas meeting. (Well, it was an annual meeting in Washington until COVID-19. We took a break from in-person for a few years, meeting over Zoom instead.) This trip is one of my favorites that I get to take as a result of my work with the MSNHA.
Over the course of the week, representatives from National Heritage Areas located all across the US meet with their Congressional delegations & gather to talk about the work we’re doing in our own communities. Ahead of the trip, I set up meetings with the offices of our senators and representatives. Once in Washington, I navigate the halls of Congress (including the underground tunnels!) and then sit down with Congressional staff, sharing with them many of the great projects, programs & partnerships we’re building in our six-county region. While in D.C., I also make time to do research, visit the Smithsonian museums and the Library of Congress & wander up and down the National Mall.
Beginning in 2017, members of Congress began seeking an alternative to individual reauthorization for each NHA. Reps. Paul Tonko and Charlie Dent (retired) – both huge champions of the work NHAs do – introduced legislation to change the process. Their first bill – H.R. 1002: The National Heritage Area Act – started a process that resulted in five separate bills in the House and the Senate, over 40 individual reauthorization bills (including one for the MSNHA introduced by Sens. Richard Shelby and Tommy Tuberville), numerous Congressional hearings and one of the largest outpourings of support in the form of letters from partners Congress has ever seen. But despite this support, both inside and outside Congress, the passage of the National Heritage Area Act was not a foregone conclusion. And, in fact, going into the end of the 117th Congress, the fate of the bill seemed bleak. While the ANHA and all of the member NHAs knew that if the bill didn’t pass that we would begin the fight again in the new Congress, never had we made it so far towards success since the first bill was introduced in 2017. Luckily the stars aligned and the final iteration of the National Heritage Area Act, S. 1942 passed both the Senate (unanimously) on Dec. 21, 2022, and the House (with 326 members yeas & only 95 nays) the next day.
On Jan. 5, President Joe Biden signed S. 1942 – the National Heritage Area Act – into law. This bill accomplished a number of things. First, it formalized the relationship between the National Heritage Area Program and the National Park Service, making NHAs an official system within NPS. Second, the bill reauthorized most existing NHAs for 15 years, meaning the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area is now authorized through 2037. Instead of individual heritage areas working on their own reauthorizations, now Congress will reauthorize the National Heritage Area program as a whole. Third, the bill authorized the creation of seven new NHAs, including the second in Alabama – the Alabama Black Belt National Heritage Area – and set clearer standards for the creation of new National Heritage Areas moving forward.
Our trip to Washington in February, then, was a celebratory one. It was a wonderful experience to visit Tuberville’s & Rep. Robert Aderholt’s Congressional offices & thank the staff for their hard work on behalf of the MSNHA & NHAs, (Big thank you to Laura, George, Emma & Bradley!) Visiting Sen. Katie Britt’s office was also a time for celebration, as Chief of Staff Clay Armentrout had worked closely with me on reauthorization while he was in Sen. Shelby’s office.
One of the best things about the National Heritage Area Act is that now our office can put more focus & energy on doing what we love most of all: supporting local music, working with local museums & archives on documenting our history, getting people out on the Tennessee River and sharing with people from both within & outside the MSNHA what about our six counties makes us so special! ###
