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Union Calls for Removal of FEMA from DHS |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Wednesday, 04 February 2009 |
Standalone agency would receive attention to fix problems, AFGE says
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) remains a failed agency that would become more effective if it were removed from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a list of recommendations from the president of a union chapter of FEMA employees.
"In the three years since Hurricane Katrina, FEMA's public relations efforts have pushed the story that the agency has learned from its mistakes, telling the public that the agency has been improving coordination, adding leadership, and recruiting talent to successfully support numerous disasters since those fateful days in the late summer of 2005," wrote Leo Bosner, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4060, which represents 400 FEMA employees in Washington, DC.
"The harsh truth is that the disasters FEMA has supported in recent years are basically mid-level disasters, and not large-scale catastrophes on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks. These more recent mid-scale disasters caused swaths of devastation, but did not for the most part destroy local and State governments' ability to coordinate and manage their own responses to affected areas. Should a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina strike today, we do not believe FEMA is ready," concluded Bosner, who is an emergency management specialist at FEMA.
As such, Bosner's list of recommendations, circulated to government officials and reporters Tuesday, calls for the restoration of FEMA as a standalone agency under the rationale that it would receive more individual attention to correct its management and operational shortfalls.
The 10 recommendations include the following:
1. Provide FEMA with strong and effective leadership at all levels, and the capabilities for that leadership to turn the agency around.
2. Evaluate management at all levels for appropriate relevant experience; and actively recruit new management and staff, both from inside FEMA and from outside agencies with first responder and emergency management experience.
3. Reduce the high number of political appointees in the agency; and ensure that all appointees have bona fide professional credentials in emergency management and a serious commitment to the reform of FEMA to ensure the agency's long-term viability and success.
4. Implement tools for job rotations and employment partnerships to strengthen FEMA's internal operations and its partnerships with federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies.
5. Implement measures to stop the abuse, incompetence, and corruption permeating the ranks of FEMA's mid- and senior-level management.
6. Evaluate program areas where the use of private contracts has created waste, inefficiency, and ethically questionable policy, for potential conversion to work that could be more efficiently and effectively accomplished by federal employees.
7. Immediately halt current agency hiring and reorganization actions until evaluations can assess their legality and appropriateness.
8. Implement mechanisms to ensure that FEMA's knowledgeable and experienced staff are involved in strategy, management, and programs.
9. Build an agency strategy and organization based on the principles and concepts of the National Incident Management System (NIMS).
10. Pursue removal of FEMA from DHS.
The FEMA employees contributing to the union's recommendations do not believe the National Response Framework is a useful plan for use in the response to a large-scale catastrophe. And while they approve of NIMS, they do not believe FEMA is organized around its principles thus defeating the intent of the management system.
FEMA also fails to link its preparedness and response mechanisms as well as its recovery system to state and local programs or mutual aid systems for truly well coordinated consequence management, the union said.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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