By Gerard Shields
The Advocate
Copyright 2006 Capital City Press
All Rights Reserved
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is locking horns with President Bush because he struck a provision that would have required the director of FEMA to have emergency preparedness management experience.
Landrieu sent a letter to Bush, saying the Senate in recent legislation intended to “protect against further mistakes such as those that plagued the 2005 hurricane response.”
Last year, former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was removed from the job for his handling of Hurricane Katrina.
Brown had no prior emergency preparedness management experience.
In the letter, also signed by the two leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the senators cited the Katrina experience.
“The bottom line is that we need FEMA leadership that meets high standards,” Landrieu and the others wrote.
“Disregarding provisions of the act that are intended to strengthen those standards is a move in the wrong direction.”
The Senate unanimously passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act.
It required the FEMA administrator to have at least five years executive experience and possess “a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management.”
Bush struck the provision, contending it violated his constitutional authority. As the bill stands now, the director would be required to have five years of executive management experience.
Bush removed the section of the law through a procedure called a signing statement, which allow him to exempt certain provisions.
White House officials said the issue is broader than the qualifications of the FEMA director and centers on constitutional questions and whether Congress can set standards on executive branch appointments.
“Signing statements ... are often questions about whether Congress, in putting together provisions of an act, has been fully consistent with the Constitution and whom it charges with executing those laws,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
“And, therefore, we look for ways to maintain fidelity of the Constitution and to the intent of the laws that have been drawn up.”
Emergency preparedness officials throughout the country sided with the senators, calling for more disaster experience for the FEMA director.
“We would like to see what the senators said they want to see, which is emergency management experience,” said Albert Ashwood, state director of emergency management in Oklahoma and president of the 550-member National Emergency Management Association.
James Lee Witt served as FEMA director under President Clinton, and as Clinton’s emergency preparedness director in Arkansas.
Now a Washington consultant, Witt said disaster management experience is necessary for the top FEMA job.
“You wouldn’t hire a bank president without banking experience,” Witt said.
FEMA’s director, R. David Paulison, has extensive emergency preparedness experience, serving as the former U.S. fire administrator and, before that, as fire chief of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department.
Another provision Bush overrode would have allowed FEMA directors to advise Congress on the nation’s disaster preparedness and emergency needs, even when that counsel runs contrary to stated administration policy.
The White House was criticized by both House and Senate committees investigating the aftermath of Katrina for not allowing some administrators to testify or provide certain documents.
White House officials countered they provided high level administrators to congressional panels and acknowledged the administration’s mistakes.
The senators’ letter calls for “open dialogue between executive and legislative branches on issues of such significant importance to our nation’s safety and security.”