Published in the October 2005 Mountain Monthly
Good Government Doesn't Make Headlines
Criticisms of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have been headline news since its uncoordinated and lethal response to Hurricane Katrina. Seems like the agency is living proof that the federal government is the source of all our problems and is so incompetent it can’t organize a two-car parade.
I say the problem isn’t government in general, but Republican control of government. FEMA was founded in 1979 and suffered under 12 political appointees, 8 of them Reagan/Bush appointees, between April 1979 and April 1993. In Washington, the common joke became that every storm brought two disasters: one when the hurricane arrived and the second when FEMA arrived.
When Bill Clinton was campaigning in 1992 he visited the Florida to observe the damage caused by Hurricane Andrew. In his book, “My Life,” he writes, “I was surprised to hear complaints from both local officials and residents about how [FEMA] was handling the aftermath of the hurricane. Traditionally, the job of FEMA director was given to a political supporter of the President who wanted some plum position but who had had no experience with emergencies. I made a mental note to avoid that mistake if I won.”
He did win, and he appointed the first competent director of FEMA, James Lee Witt. Witt grew up in Arkansas, completed high school and then built up a successful construction company, and at age 33 was elected County Judge of Yell County for six terms. Governor Clinton put him in charge of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services in 1988.
President Clinton appointed Witt as FEMA director in 1993. Witt turned the agency around. During his eight-year term he handled government response to something like 350 declared disasters, including a dozen serious hurricanes, the 1993 Mississippi flood and the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake. Witt's biggest change was to get FEMA to focus on reducing risks ahead of disasters and to fund local prevention programs. In one Illinois town 400 people applied for aid after that 1993 flood, but with proper prevention planning supervised by Witt, only 11 needed to apply when the river flooded again in 1995. This kind of success story doesn’t make headlines.
In 1996 FEMA received the Innovations in American Government award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (not newsworthy, no headlines here). Witt reduced the time it took to get checks to disaster victims from 30 days to 7 (no headlines, but this made a lot of difference to the grateful recipients). Because of the reinforcement of buildings under Project Impact (initiated in 1997, cost $20 million), the 2001 Nisqually earthquake was a non-event in the Puget Sound area and in western Washington. That very day newly elected President Bush announced that Project Impact would be discontinued.
It seems weird that Bush praised Witt in his first presidential debate with Al Gore: “I have to pay the administration a compliment. James Lee Witt of FEMA has done a really good job of working with governors during times of crisis.” But when he was elected he turned around and replaced Witt with Allbaugh and then Brown, both “eddicated” political hacks with law degrees and no disaster management experience.
In April 2001 the Bush administration announced that it planned to privatize much of FEMA's work (that’s what he wants to do with Social Security too, remember). The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 became the excuse for downgrading the agency from a cabinet-level position and folding it into the Department of Homeland Security. By 2003 FEMA's preparation and planning functions had been reassigned to something called the Office of Preparedness and Response.
In the summer of 2004 FEMA, by now just about returned to its pre-Witt condition, denied Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Tom Rodrigue, Jefferson Parish flood zone manager, said "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it." It also slashed The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans. In 2005 the Corps budget was again slashed by a record $71.2 million. But after Hurricane Katrina Congress appropriated $51 Billion for disaster cleanup. Administration officials say no one could have predicted Katrina, but those denied budget requests were based on disaster predictions.
And President Bush has ignored other disaster predictions. In early 2001, FEMA listed a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three most serious threats to the nation. The other two were, get this, a TERRORIST ATTACK IN NEW YORK CITY and a large earthquake hitting San Francisco.
Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke tried to get President Bush to focus on the terrorist attack threat. CIA Director George Tenet did too. So it seems to me that the Bush administration has struck out not once, but twice. The result has been lots of headlines (and don’t forget that 9/11 led to the invasion of Iraq and many more headlines).
Peace and prosperity may be boring, but I prefer a government that is boring to one that stumbles from crisis to crisis, creating headlines and photo ops for politicians and much preventable suffering for those governed.