EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — In the days immediately following the train derailment and fire in East Palestine a year ago on Feb. 3, there were immediate calls for action. It was a crisis that brought together Ohio’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown, and the state’s newest senator, JD Vance, who had only taken his oath of office one month earlier on Jan. 3.
They jointly called on the NTSB for immediate changes to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and they called on Congress to codify them in the Railway Safety Act that the two introduced in March of last year.
The bill takes a number of key steps to improve rail safety protocols, such as enhancing safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials, establishing requirements for wayside defect detectors, creating a permanent requirement for railroads to operate with at least two-person crews, increasing fines for wrongdoing committed by rail carriers, and more.
Brown told News 5 in March how the need to act was immediate while the public and lawmakers were on the same page for a change.
“I am not going to let the railroad’s lobby slow it down,” Brown said in March. “I am not going to let the railroad lobby’s friends in the senate slow it down so we’re going to move as quickly as we can.”
By June, it appeared ready for a full Senate vote.
“We plan to have that bill on the floor next week,” Brown told us on a June visit to East Palestine.
That didn’t happen, and now, more than seven months later, it still hasn’t. Brown said on this day that is in part because of the railroad lobby as a whole.
“It’s why people hate Washington, “ said Brown. “It’s why the railroads have had far too much power, they’ve far too often gotten their way with Congress. I’m not giving up."
Neither is Vance, who told News 5 the end result, not the timeline, is what matters.
“Well, look, progress has been slow on rail safety and on much else that is affecting East Palestine, but it is happening. We're not at a standstill. I do think that we're going to get the Rail Safety bill passed,” Vance said. “I’ve received assurances from the Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he will bring that up to the floor for a vote.”
The new difficulty is the headwind they face now that this is an election year and how that will play into a vote. Vance needs to find eight Republican votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster; he has five Republican co-sponsors, a sixth who voted for it in committee last May, so he needs two, which he’s confident he can get.
“We will get the 60 votes. My job is to get the politics out of this,” Brown said on Tuesday. “This isn’t a union issue, this isn’t a politics issue, this is a public safety issue.
Meanwhile, in East Palestine, Councilwoman Linda May, who joined Brown on the call with reporters, said while they hope these added protections from Washington will come, they remain focused on controlling what they can control, and that is certainly not yesterday but tomorrow.
“The accident happened,” said May. “We acknowledge it but we’re not ready to hold ourselves in sack cloths and ashes. We’re going to move forward with our lives.”
