FirstNet Authority board renames committees, fills key roles

A FirstNet Authority board featuring seven new members conducted its first meeting today and immediately implemented some changes, including renaming three of the four board committees in an effort to better describe their evolving roles in the organization.

New FirstNet Authority Chair Steve Benjamin—the mayor of Columbia, S.C., who was appointed to lead the board last month—described the opportunity to serve on the FirstNet Authority board as a “sacred trust,” expressing enthusiasm about working with other board members and the organization’s staff to oversee the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN). This sentiment echoed by other new board members during the meeting, which was webcast.

While many aspects of the board meeting featured new faces and changing roles, Benjamin announced that Vice Chair Richard Carrizzo accepted his invitation to remain in that post. Benjamin also said that Carrizzo will continue to chair the board’s Advocacy Committee—the one board committee that maintained its name during the meeting.

By unanimous vote, the names of the other board committees were changed:

• The Network and Technology Committee was renamed the Programs and Future Planning Committee. This committee is chaired by Jocelyn Moore, one of the new private-sector board members who once served as chief of staff for former Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who spearheaded the 2012 legislation that created the FirstNet Authority.
• The Governance and Personnel Committee is now the Governance and Risk Committee. This committee is chaired by Sylvia Moir, a new board member and retired police chief in Tempe, Ariz., who noted that she has 33 years of policing experience in Arizona and California.
• The Finance Committee’s new name is the Finance and Investment Committee. This committee will continue to be chaired by Brian Crawford, a healthcare-system executive who was appointed to the FirstNet Authority board in 2018.

Benjamin said he is pleased with the makeup of each board committee.

“The mix of talent and expertise in each committee will be helpful for each committee’s work and the work with the board, as a whole, so I really want to thank all of you [board members] for your willingness to serve,” Benjamin said.

Chris Lombard, deputy chief of the Seattle Fire Department, recently was appointed as the chair of the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC). During the meeting, Lombard announced that Brian Schaefer from the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians and Shawn Talmadge—Virginia’s deputy secretary of public safety and homeland security—were elected to join him on the PSAC executive committee.

One highlight of the meeting was the announcement of Mike Duyck as the winner of the Harlin R. McEwen Public Safety Broadband Communications Award, the only award given by the FirstNet Authority. A member of the PSAC executive board for the past three years, Duyck served as the fire chief for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue in Oregon for 30 years before retiring from that position in 2019.