# H.R. 5200 (119th): Emergency Reporting Act

Emergency Reporting Act This bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate and report on emergency communications outages (e.g., 9-1-1 outages). Specifically, the FCC must publish a general report on (1) the volume and nature of 9-1-1 outages that are not required to be reported under current outage notification rules, (2) the value and practicality of including visual information in outage notifications from communications providers, and (3) recommended changes to FCC rules to address these issues. Separately, the FCC must hold annual public hearings on events for which the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) was activated for at least a week. (DIRS is a reporting system that is activated during severe weather and other events impacting communications service. It enables communications providers to report outages and other degradations to service.) After each such hearing, the FCC must issue a report that includes information about the number, duration, and nature of all associated outages, along with recommendations for improving the resiliency of affected communications services or networks. Such reports must generally be made public on the FCC website.

## How this bill is scored

Tier: no Tier 1 record. A bill with no record cannot newly become Tier 1.
Lane: disaster_resilience. Category: not stored. Lane tag: not stored.
Lane: emergency_communications. Category: not stored. Lane tag: not stored.
Lane: procedural. Category: not stored. Lane tag: not stored.
Lane: public_safety. Category: not stored. Lane tag: not stored.
Tier 1 sign-off: no record. A bill with no record cannot newly become Tier 1.
Stored polarity: mixed. Only tags the rules mark scoreable on a mixed bill are scored. A yea can draw a penalty or a credit according to the tag. A nay on a tag scored as good can draw a penalty.
Roll 126: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass. Vote type: final_passage.
Polarity rationale: Reviewed enrichment (llm_import) polarity: The bill pursues an ordinary prudential good, improving emergency communications resilience and transparency about outages, without directly advancing or restraining a named moral evil. It adds federal reporting and hearing mandates, which carry ordinary governance costs, so it is best classed as mixed rather than good or evil.
Theological note: The measure concerns public safety and the reliability of emergency communications, which bears on neighbor-love and the prudent protection of life during disasters. It does not itself advance or restrain a named moral harm, so its relevance is prudential stewardship of public institutions rather than a direct moral verdict.

## Recorded votes

Roll 126: On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass. Yea 386 · Nay 7 · Other 38.

HTML: https://justmeasure.org/bill/hr-5200-119/