12 Mar 2018
Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Magazine featured Bijan Koohmaraie, '14, in the 18 to Watch in '18. Article below.
It was trial by fire for House Energy and Commerce staffer Bijan Koohmaraie, whose first day of work as counsel for the committee involved a markup on health legislation that lasted 27 hours.
Things barely slowed down from there.
Koohmaraie, 29, immersed himself in work on regulations of autonomous cars, which led to more late nights and “a lot of weekends” to put together a bill the committee unanimously reported favorably and the House passed by voice vote.
The bill (HR 3388) became the first autonomous vehicle-related legislation to pass in either chamber. Its easy passage belied the behind-the-scenes work Koohmaraie led to draft a consensus bill. Committee staff held hundreds of meetings with interested parties. Late in the process, as staffers closed in on consensus language, those meetings were bipartisan, which helped pave the way for speedy approval in committee and on the floor.
One need only look to the Senate, where a handful of senators have for months been blocking a similar bill (S 1445) from passage by unanimous consent, to grasp the challenge of writing one with near-universal approval.
A Nebraska native, Koohmaraie got his start in politics interning for home-state Republican Rep. Adrian Smith during his junior year at Nebraska Wesleyan University. He was hired on as staff assistant for the summer before returning for his senior year.
He later went to law school at the University of Nebraska and worked as an assistant attorney general in the state.
Koohmaraie was tasked with spearheading work on autonomous vehicles despite having no background in technology, simply because that’s what needed to be done when he was hired early last year, he says.
“When I got here, this was kind of the hot issue that the subcommittee was working on and I really just kind of dove in,” he says.
Koohmaraie read up on automotive regulations like the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which had to be tweaked to realize the benefits autonomous vehicles could offer, and he proved to be a quick study.
His training as an assistant attorney general provided valuable skills for navigating Congress, he says. Meeting with autonomous vehicle experts wasn’t much different for him than taking depositions on lots of other subjects unfamiliar to him.
“When you depose expert witnesses, you have to become almost an expert in their field,” he says.
Along with the expertise, Koohmaraie developed an enthusiasm for the subject. Driverless cars, he says, have the potential to save thousands of lives and improve many more.
Koohmaraie says the work on the first bill on driverless cars is just a starting point.
“This isn’t the last word on self-driving,” he says. “It’s the first word.”"18 to Watch in '18: Bijan Koohmaraie." CQ Magazine (March 5, 2018). http://library.cqpress.com/cqweekly/weeklyreport115-000005275119.