Sen. Ashley Moody continues fight for hurricane emergency safety legislation

As a young person, as a child here on Treasure Island. So it feels like I'm coming home when I come here. A lot of time on that beach, right there, growing up, learning life's lessons. And maybe if I ever got in trouble, maybe it was here. Maybe. But since I was perfect, that never happened. So it's wonderful to be here with you. It was also the same reason I was so heartbroken after the one-two punch that this area suffered last year. And it's hard to believe we're coming up on a year. It's been just under a year. Friday is the year of that first punch. And immediately thereafter, when I was with law enforcement, going up and down, it was completely dark. No lights. People out everywhere trying to protect their homes. We were very, very vocal that this was going to be a safe place to recover. And that the last thing people should be worried about was crime or theft in the middle of just trying to get back in and protect their homes and their families. And I just remember being heartbroken as I drove around and just saw the destruction here. And things work out in very mysterious ways. But there was an announcement last night, if you saw, $113 million block grant to Pinellas County to go to low and moderate income folks that are still struggling or struggled this past year with housing. And we are so excited about that. So great news for Pinellas County and great news for this area. And I am told we're going to start getting that money out as fast as possible, hopefully by Christmas. So we're grateful for HUD for jumping on that. And we know that the county officials here will work diligently to get that money into people's hands because we know that they're still struggling. And I'm so proud to now be in Washington on behalf of you as your senator to make sure that these things are moving and running efficiently and that they're paying attention to people that are still struggling. We saw that we're just coming up on a year and this money is getting pushed into the county. And someone had mentioned, well, wow, that seemed like a really long time. And I wanted to thank the commissioner who jumped in and said, no, you don't understand the way this is working. In under a year, it's warp speed for the way these things have worked historically. And so I know those of you that have been in leadership for a long time here in Pinellas County. And I see many familiar faces here today with me. This is a celebration about resources coming. And we'll keep paying attention. We'll keep focusing on how we restore Pinellas County and make it strong, especially here where it was hardest hit in Treasure Island. I know for many months and still going, we have fire and police working on a trailer. And that is difficult. Coming from a law enforcement family, as you know, my husband is a law enforcement officer. It is difficult work anyway. And trying to work out of a trailer as you're stepping out every day to put yourself between chaos and order and crime and safety, you want to have a place you can go back to, a home base, so to speak, that's stable and safe and secure. And trailers can't be a long-term solution. So we are committed to helping this county. And I know there's great news ahead. We're getting new buildings. I hear fire on one, police on two. Is that how it goes, floor two? All right, are we still fighting? Are we gonna have a charity tournament or something to see who gets to floor two? Just an idea. We also have a firefighter in our family. There's a big red versus blue battle. And I don't mean the one that everybody thinks of. So it's great to be back here in my hometown or home area of Tampa Bay. Mother Nature certainly disrupted us. And I know here in Treasure Island, it really took a hard hit. I know as a state leader, we were very focused on this area, personally visiting many, many times. And who would have known just a year ago when I was out here patrolling these areas with law enforcement, that I would be able to take your needs and your voices to our nation's capital. And now today, the morning after it was announced that help is on its way in terms of resources, truly, it means the world to me to be operating in this capacity, in this role as your senator. I hope you know and I hope you can hear it in my voice. I am very focused on making sure that Washington is working for our state. And as Attorney General, when I was so fierce about holding the agencies accountable, not only to the scope of law in which they were given, but making sure they weren't getting or interfering in the way we wanted to lead the state and the policies that we wanted to implement. And we've shown that if we stay true to a mission and getting things done, you'll break all records. I mean, new business formations were number one. Tourism records were breaking them. People wanting to move here, I mean, my goodness, I think people are elbowing each other out of the way to get here. We know how to lead here in Florida. And so much of my work as AG was keeping Washington out of our business and fighting with agencies. So you better believe, as Senator, I've already been involved in these agencies, making things work for Florida. And we've already been delivering results, whether that's rule changes or getting things put into legislation to make this state work or to make Washington work for Florida. And I'll keep doing that. I hope you can hear in my voice how excited I am to be in that new role. But today we're here about a very important piece of legislation that I worked on as AG. There were numerous former FEMA directors at the time that were calling out car manufacturers that stopped putting AM radio in new vehicles. And everyone was astounded because AM radio has always been a medium that can be used to get out emergency information when other ways of communicating fail. Whether that's internet, sometimes when electricity's out, sometimes cellular is out, AM radio we know is more reliable and can even get farther than FM waves. So it's always been a staple in emergencies. And so when we learned that some car manufacturers stopped putting it in vehicles, that was a concern for so many former emergency managers and directors. And certainly, as you can imagine, someone that works with law enforcement and fire that's on the front lines in times of emergency here in Florida, it was especially a concern to me as Attorney General. So we pushed at the time Congress to say, you have to do something about this. We cannot just abandon our traditional way of communicating in times of distress and disaster. And who would have thought that I'm now a senator, that I get to work on this legislation? And I'm proud to say, while it didn't pass in the last Congress, in this new Congress, the 119th Congress, we've already gotten it out of committee in the House, and now we've gotta push it forward and get this thing passed. During the aftermath of a hurricane strike, we know, and in many parts, and even in North Carolina we saw this when everything was up. People had the radio, the handheld radios with the batteries they were using to get information, or some people could get in their cars and turn them on and listen. And so this is an incredibly, I think it might be missing the attention it deserves because in some other states they may not face the same type of situations and disasters that we especially know all too well here in Florida. And so it's been one of my top priorities. I am co-sponsoring this bill. Gus Bilirakis is also pushing this, and the House is so proud of him, and many other of the congressional leaders here in Florida are on board. So we're also here to say we're in the middle of peak hurricane season, we just passed the peak day, and we know that most of that activity occurs right after that peak day, so we're in it right now. So if you haven't prepared, get out and prepare. You can go to floridadasaster.org, that's the best place to see what to get and what to do and learn your evacuation routes. I'm sure you will hear more about that from people who wanna talk to you about that. But this was very important to me to get here and spend some time here in Treasure Island. I promised I would be here and I didn't wanna let your law enforcement and your community leaders down. You're gonna be hearing from another favorite of ours and friend from AM Radio, I'm so glad he could join us. But without further ado, and before I get back up to close this out, I wanna call up Chief Bars. Hello everybody, I'm Trip Bars, I'm the Fire Chief here in Treasure Island, and I'm pleased to be here to speak with you today. And pleased to thank the Senator for coming to visit. It means a lot, especially on the anniversary, the one year anniversary. We've been through a lot. This was devastating, back-to-back hurricanes. We talked about it for years in our annual hurricane preparedness talk with our residents. And now we're seeing the result of that. We're in recovery mode and we had to set the expectation. This is a years-long process. The state has been great to work with, FEMA's been great. I look forward to working with the Senator and helping us with our infrastructure. We lost our police and fire station, we have no EOC. A lot of our community buildings were damaged, our recreation, our public works facilities. We need to get concentrating and working and funding the rebuilding of those facilities so that our residents and businesses can rebuild themselves. We have to have the infrastructure done before we come back to a vibrant community that you all know us to be. And then we welcome the visitors and it's Treasure Island from there on, right? So we're going there and we appreciate the federal help. I can't say enough about the bill on AM radio. It is, communication is key, especially in those first few hours and days following a natural disaster. Reliable source of information. We can't get this stuff from Facebook and word of mouth. You need a medium and a broadcast medium that is durable, rugged, reliable, and that's AM radio. So it needs to be in cars, you need to have that in an AM radio. They make hand crank and solar radios. Get one of those, put it in your emergency kit. Florida Division of Emergency Management's website, the Senator spoke about. Great place to go to get prepared. So thank you for your time and thank you again for being here. And here's knocking on wood that we get through this hurricane season without a repeat and go from there. Chief Parker. So if you know anything about Ashley Moody, she does not toot her own horn. So I'm gonna toot a little bit for her. She's incredibly modest, but I was really excited when she became Senator because I knew her from AG, being in law enforcement in the state of Florida for over 36 years. She's an AG, she gets things done. She doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk. That's been appreciated by law enforcement all over the state of Florida. That's why I think we have the best law enforcement in the country in the state of Florida. She's a big reason for that in the last few years. I met her at a press conference a few months ago and I said, you really need to come to Treasure Island. We got wallet. And here she is. And her staff has been working with me since day one after that. And they've been amazing. So thank you for all that you do for law enforcement. And now thank you for what you're doing for the state of Florida. Because I know for a fact, you're gonna get things done in Washington and that's what we need. As far as AM radio goes in communication, there's nothing more important before, during and after a disaster than communication. And I'm sure you've all have friends and neighbors that can tell you stories about what happened to them during the storm. How were they getting information? When were things gonna be over? That was a big thing to scare people. When is this gonna end? When is the water gonna go down? Listening to the meteorologists and the people on the radio stations and the reporters telling, okay, you have another couple hours, it's gonna be peak now and then everything will get better. That guides people through these disasters. If you don't have that type of communication, because everything else, we have the greatest cell phones in the world and they all got wiped out after the storm. You couldn't get a bar, you couldn't talk to people on your cell phones. You have to have some type of communication. Because absence of reliable communication starts the rumors and all the other things that's going on and that just isn't good for anybody. So to have AM radios in people's cars and on portable radios people have in their homes, it couldn't be any more important. So thank you for sponsoring this legislation. Thank you for what you've done for law enforcement and thank you for what you're doing for the state of Florida. Well, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Brian Scott. I'm chairman of the Pinellas County Commission. And I wanna thank Senator Moody from the bottom of my heart for coming down to Treasure Island here and talking about the most important thing we do as elected officials, and that is ensure public safety. And I wanna really give her kudos for her initiative on AM radio. As we found out last year in an emergency, we may go days, perhaps weeks without power. And when we lose our digital devices that Chief Barkley just mentioned, you can't get a bar, you can't get any signal. AM radio is what always comes through, whether that is in your car or whether that is a hand crank or a battery operated one that is in your kitchen countertop. That is how you communicate with people. I remember when I was a kid, you get in your mom and dad's car back in the early 70s and they've got that old Philco analog AM radio with the big buttons that you would push and move the needle over. And you were really high society if you got one with an eight track. But it always worked. I mean, maybe the eight track didn't work, but the AM radio always worked. So thank you very much Senator Moody for spearheading this. I think this is gonna do a lot to ensure public safety. And as the Senator spoke about as well, last night we had a great announcement that the county has $813 million of community development block grant funds that are available. And we have hired a company to manage that process for us. We will be accepting grant applications here in a few weeks with the goal of getting money out into people's hands by Christmas. This is people first money. This is money that is designed to help people recover, lift you up, get you back into your homes. So for more information, you can go to recover.pinellas.gov or just simply text 888-777 for more information. And then lastly, I just wanna touch on beach nourishment. And thank you so much to Senator Moody and her staff for jumping in early and often as soon as she was sworn in to help us with conversation with the Army Corps of Engineers. With her efforts along with Senator Scott and Congresswoman Luna, we've had some very productive discussions with the Army Corps of Engineer on this easement language stuff. And feel that by our next nourishment cycle, that we'll hopefully have them back in as partners. But in the meantime, we're doing beach renourishment 100% on our own with $125 million of our tourist development tax dollars. That project started about two weeks ago on Indian shores and it's gonna be moving south. So for some perspective, you get a chance, go out and take a look at that. And you will see that we are adding over seven feet of elevation to the beach and extending the beach out quite a significant way. So when you go out and you see what we didn't have versus what we're gonna have, that is our number one defense for storms, for storm protection. So it is a huge deal for us. And I just wanna thank Senator Moody and everybody for all their help getting that done. So thank you very much. And now, Roger Shulman. I'm Roger Shulman with Salem Media. I work for a number of AM radio stations, including 860 WGUL here, 930 WLSS in Sarasota and several others. And I just must say, I was taking a look around the beach here on the way over and it is so much different than a year ago. I remember standing with Chief Barkley a year ago next to a pile of rubble out here. Now it looks back to normal. It's just beautiful here. And it just shows the resiliency of this area. And of course, the mayor of my beautiful city, Mayor Rector of Clearwater, they've done a wonderful job getting things back to normal too. It's almost back to normal, but not totally, but no one would know it if they didn't live there. AM radio has been around for 101 years. I haven't been there for the entirety of it, although I may look like it. But it has been a mainstay. It's provided news information. It's hyper-local. And when things go wrong, I mean, our television friends do a superb job. The forecasters are world-class here in this area and most of the country, and they do a great job informing people. Our listeners and viewers are mostly streaming now because of the internet. But when things go bad, when the power is out, you lose your cell phone. You can't look at that anymore for information. You lose your television. You lose almost everything. And FM radio is great, but it is a horizon-based medium. It shoots to the horizon, 40, 50, 60 miles, and that's it. Nice thing about AM radio is if everything is gone, you will be able to pick up stations from beyond your area, particularly at night. Here, you'll be able to hear 750 WSB in Atlanta. WBT in Charlotte will come in well. And if a horrible disaster happens, another hurricane where everything is gone, you'll be able to hear those stations and those stations will serve you. And so many people told me after the latest hurricanes, I didn't have a radio in the house. The cell phone was dead. We lost everything there. So we went out in the garage and we listened to the AM radio in the car. And that's why this legislation that Senator Moody and formerly Attorney General Moody has done such a great job promoting is a public safety measure that will really save lives if it is implemented. Taking the radios out of cars, there's some political things involved in it. A lot of AM radio is thought to be on the Republican side, that sort of thing. And it's a cost measure. If they can eliminate $50 in each car and they make a million cars, that's a lot of money. But to eliminate that public safety factor is something that is really a detriment. And to have our legislature, our national legislature pass this bill is really essential. And to hear that voice in the night when there is no lights, no air conditioning, nothing works, to hear that voice in the night giving you some information or just reassurance is truly a wonderful thing. And I would like to thank everyone for the support you've given us. And we hope we do not have to provide that support to you this season. No more hurricanes, please. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Carol Braddy and I am a resident here on Treasure Island. And I was invited to come to speak to you today when it was learned that I am an avid listener of AM radio. It's the only, I only listen to AM. I've tried FM every once in a while, but it just doesn't cut it. Not into that music. But I started listening to AM, oh, I wanna say 20, 25 years ago. I've had several jobs where my territory was all of Florida and Georgia. So I did a lot of driving and I would always listen to AM radio. And I was surprised how much information that it gave out. Locally, we get local information, we get state information, we get national information, or I should say news. And I can't imagine getting in my car and I always turn on the radio. I can't imagine if AM wasn't there. And as I thought about this last evening and when I knew I would come to speak, I thought about how many important times AM radio played in my travels and just being here out on the beach and in various different situations. When I would travel from Miami, come back up to, I lived in New Tampa, I'd always listen to see what the traffic was gonna be. And anyone that lived in New Tampa knows. Why is it that the trucks always flip at Fowler and Fletcher, right? Right about four o'clock or three o'clock. And so it gave me that opportunity to take a different route home. I remember working when I worked at St. Joe's Hospital and it was actually Hurricane Charlie. And I listened to AM radio because I had to know the route to get to work and I had to know which gas stations were open. And so it's just played an important part in my life so many times. I used to live in Wyoming and we truly had a tornado and a flash flood at the same time. Back then there was no internet, there was nothing. What did we grab? And we had basements. We grabbed the radio and we grabbed the flashlight and we went to the basement and we sat there and we listened to know when it was safe to come out. So I mean, I can go on and on how many times AM radio has played a part in my life. So I just wanted to share that with you today. And again, I can't imagine getting in my car and not listening to the news that I get from AM radio. So thank you very, very much. I think Carol, like many, many others, during these storms listened to AM radio to find out what happened, what was going on, when all the power was knocked out, even here in Florida. And we know that that is the case for so many up and down the West Coast. So thank you for being here today. I know we get used to these things where we're trying to impress upon folks how important something is. And I think sometimes it turns into like a Charlie Brown kind of situation where you just hear want, want, it's coming out of my mouth. But if you heard from somebody who relied on information where they could get it nowhere else and really needed to know that in a crucial time, we thought that was incredibly important. So thank you for being here and braving this situation. The AM radio for every car act is so important and not just because of disaster situations. In many instances, it is still the free medium that anybody can find out really important information about their lives and their communities. These days, it seems like every now, every single moment you're being asked to buy a new subscription or sign up for this and you can get this information or sign up for that and just another thing to add on to your credit card. And to some extent, there needs to be a free medium for the people's government to share important information without them having to subscribe. I mean, at its core, we are your government. We serve you and we have to be able to communicate, especially when lives are on the line. And so this is why this was so important to me as Attorney General and certainly now as a U.S. Senator and I'm gonna keep pushing and urging my other colleagues to understand how important this is, not just for the specific town of Treasure Island, although we know it is, but truly to our nation. And so I'm incredibly excited to be standing here in my home area to say we're gonna keep working on this diligently like we do everything, but with the passion and the resiliency that you showed after these two horrible events we suffered last year and are coming up on their anniversary. So thank you for being here with us today. There are so many people and leaders in the community. Do any of you wanna stand up and say hello? Introduce Kathleen Peters. I mean, we have so many here with us. Thank you for being here. From the bottom of my heart, it's good to see your faces and to know that we're all in this, leading Florida in this recovery with a common mission and that is to make sure that we remain always Florida strong. So thank you so much for being here today and joining me. Appreciate it. And I almost forgot, we might have some questions in the back. Anybody have any questions for anybody up here? Absolutely. I think Florida, being a peninsula, we are always going to be paying attention to our coastline and so much of our state's success and economic prosperity and strength of our communities relies on us having coastline a strong coastline and the restoration of that when needed. And so I'm excited to be a part of those efforts. Thank you very much for the recognition. And I think not just here, but there are other places in Florida where we've got to focus on that. So coming up on a year, I will say one of the things before I became the Attorney General as a judge, certainly no one was asking for me to run out in the aftermath of a storm with a gavel and help make sure that our communities were safe. I think one thing that Florida does well and one thing I was so proud to take on as Attorney General is we know that we cannot in every way protect every home there will be an affect from a major storm. And I think what we've done well here in Florida is we are incredibly prepared. I will give it to Kevin Guthrie. He has already been up to meet with me numerous times in Washington, focusing on ways that we can help Florida. That is your state director here in Florida, traveling to Washington already in anticipation, not just talking about recovery, but anticipation on what we can do better together. And so I think here in Florida, what we've done well is be very proactive and getting folks ready, plan strategically, and then understand in the aftermath, these will be the demands, having things staged to be able to efficiently respond. It's always going to be a bit chaotic when you're responding initially because we never know exactly where a storm is gonna hit. We try our best, the forecasters are really great, but we never know exactly. In fact, I know many stories who listened to AM radio and at the last moment it took a turn and they only knew that because they were listening to AM radio. And so I think in Florida, we've kind of gotten the proactive down as much as the reactive in terms of addressing what we need to do as a state. And we can only get better. And I'm committed as a United States Senator to doing that. I think with AM radio, I think we have forgotten the importance of AM radio. And that's why I was so proud of our former FEMA directors that came out. It wasn't a political issue. They all came on board as former FEMA directors and said, this cannot happen. We're starting to see a trend in some new vehicles where they're dropping it totally. And recognizing that, they're like, we have to get out in front of this. If you don't get out in front of it before more start doing that, that's gonna be a challenge. It's gonna be hard to unwind that. And within the legislation, it makes an effective date and asks specifically for certain options to be offered and other ways to make up for that time period where AM wasn't included. But I think this happens as a society as we move forward and things change and new technologies develop and it will happen not just in the AM radio arena, it will be a million other things as we move forward as a people trying to live together in a civilized society and how we do that in a safe way because things change. And so you're always gonna have to go back and say, okay, this has happened. How is this affecting us as a whole, as a people trying to live safely and securely? What do we need to do to make sure that we maintain that ability, even though the world is changing and technology is changing at lightning speed? And this is one of those things. I think sometimes you have to have leaders and you're very fortunate here to have people that really have their finger on the pulse of what's going on. You have to remain diligent and be able to roll up your sleeves and keep working. And that's the one of the thing I always encourage people to get involved, run for office, volunteer. We're kind of all trying to do this together. I think that's one of the reasons Florida is so successful. One of the reasons Tampa Bay is so successful is because you have people willing to do that and they don't just get into these positions and say, okay, I'm in this position. I mean, I can tell you how many times I've had folks from Pinellas call me, whether it's Chaney or Peters or whoever, and tell me about a new drug that they've just found. And nobody's talking about this and we need to do something about it because our numbers here are unacceptable. And if we lose another kid to this, their head's gonna explode. It's avoidable. What are we gonna do? I mean, you have great leaders here. They're very diligent about staying on top of trends. And I hope to do that and be a partner to them in Washington. And this is one of those trends that we've got to stay on top of and make sure that we don't let AM go by the wayside because fundamentally, it is so important for so many reasons. But the one of the reasons we're focusing on here today is disaster prevention and recovery. Yes, ma'am. That's a great question. So in this legislation, we are focused on making sure we're stemming the tide of taking AM out and making sure that manufacturers are keeping AM in there. And then it addresses some of the options for those where it's not in there just during this brief period of time where a few manufacturers have started taking it out. So it does address that. And so if we can get it passed, I think it'll go a long way to ensuring AM remains in every vehicle. So thank you very much for bravely asking those questions. We're gonna stop here, but we are gonna be around to take more questions. Really appreciate, again, you guys being here. And if I could ask this group, they're gonna tell us to get together to take a picture. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I'm Charlie Vins. I'm the new city manager down here. How are you? How's everything? It's a little crazy down here. I would love for you to meet my, I don't know if you've got to meet him yet, Ned. This is who I'd like for you to meet. Ned, can you come here just a second? This is the new city manager. Are you guys here? We have. Okay, then. We got together yesterday. If you'd like to grab him. Oh, good. Okay. I'll make sure if there's anything.