Ross Attacks FEMA?s Mismanagement (Editorial)

Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., continues to expose the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s management shortcomings — not just in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina but in the parking of 10,777 unused manufactured homes at the Hope Municipal Airport.

The problem is but a tiny bit of the huge waste being turned up in a federal agency that supposedly has a leader, but one who shows no leadership.

In mid-February, a congressional report called the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina a “failure of leadership” that left people stranded when they were most in need.

It was being kind — perhaps because it came from a Republican 11-member House select committee. Recognizing the failure at the federal level does not excuse the mistakes made by local and state governments, but neither do those mistakes excuse FEMA’s Keystone Kops routine.

While President Bush still backed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the panel called him “detached” and said then-FEMA Director Michael Brown was “clueless.” Of course, Bush also praised Brown before he was canned.

Naturally, Chertoff wants to give FEMA a 10 percent budget increase to fix the problems. How about firing Chertoff — so he can join Brown on the speaking circuit — and hiring someone who can run the department?

The government’s lack of planning and then overreaction was a second disaster in the making when it was announced. It was obvious from the start that there would be tremendous waste of millions, perhaps billions. That has been borne out.

Government reports on the $85 billion in federal aid show accounting flaws, fraud and mismanagement on a colossal scale.

Offering the $2,000 emergency aid credit cards might have been the right thing to do, but some control over identification and spending on basic necessities should have been included.

With no controls, tens of millions of dollars in relief funds were spent on things such as a $450 tattoo, trips to strip joints and casinos, $1,100 for an engagement ring and a shopping spree for “adult erotica products at Condoms-to-Go.”

Duplicate payments were made to about 5,000 of the nearly 11,000 debit card recipients of Katrina aid, first with debit cards and then again via electronic bank transfer.

And at Hope, there are mobile homes worth hundreds of millions of dollars wasting away in a muddy field after the unused runways were filled. There’s a good possibility they’ll never be used to house victims of the hurricane because of a dispute over where to install them.

Our federal government forked up $850 million for 25,000 mobile homes. There are about 55,000 Louisiana families waiting for mobile homes, some of whom are living in tents, according to Ross. So what’s the problem?

FEMA regulations prohibit the mobile homes from being installed in flood-prone coastal areas.

FEMA ordered far too many mobile homes and far too few travel trailers, which are smaller, less expensive, more portable and can be placed on lots in the disaster zone.

Here’s Ross:

“Years before Hurricane Katrina, FEMA developed a manual which enumerates qualifications for placement of manufactured homes which includes numerous steps that make it extremely difficult for an individual to quickly receive transitional housing. For example, the current manual states manufactured homes cannot be placed on a flood plain. Our Gulf Coast just experienced a natural disaster where most of the homes destroyed were built on a flood plain. The reality is this: FEMA owns over 11,000 manufactured homes that are not being delivered due to FEMA’s self-imposed, unattainable and exhaustive policies. This manual needs to be rewritten with a good dose of common sense so that we can get these homes to people in Mississippi and Louisiana who lost their homes and everything they own over five months ago. In a time of a national crisis, we must re-evaluate the guidelines and consider suspending the rules to get American citizens out of tents and hotels and into a new home so they can begin the process of rebuilding their lives.”

Makes sense to us, which is far more than we can about anything coming out of FEMA.