FEMA gets a makeover

Pub date July 17, 2006
WriterG.W. Schulz
SectionPolitics Blog

By G.W. Schulz

The major news organizations hardly touched it, but a congressional appropriations provision reorganizing and renaming FEMA passed the Senate 87 to 11 last week. To his begrudging credit, Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, originally wanted to make FEMA a federal agency independent of the Department of Homeland Security, a plan that would have stripped away the enormous layers of bureaucracy some say lead to the slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

FEMA’s director could now – if the restructuring works – directly access the president during states of emergency and move with more flexibility by possessing its own command and control structure during disasters, according to a statement from Lott’s office. Many of Lott’s constituents, of course, were badly battered during last summer’s hurricane season. And FEMA’s response to the storms was not unlike like an emergency vehicle full of paramedics arriving three days late to an accident scene because they had to call their boss at every stop sign.