Editorial: Letting their guard down

Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006 | 7:02 a.m.

The nation's governors are fighting legislation that would allow the president to take control of the National Guard during natural disasters or security emergencies, thereby stripping the authority from governors to oversee Guard activities in their own states.

In a letter to Congress, the governors of 51 states and U.S. territories demanded that the National Guard provision be dropped from the version of the National Defense Authorization Act that was recently passed by the House. The letter was drafted Aug. 6 and was circulated last week for signatures from those attending the National Governors Association summer meeting in South Carolina.

The provision removes governors from managing National Guard forces that are called out in the event their states are hit by what the bill describes as "a serious or man-made disaster, accident, or catastrophe." The measure "was drafted without consultation or input from governors and represents an unprecedented shift" in power from governors to the federal government, the letter says.

One has only to recall how long it took the federal government in general - and the Bush administration in particular - to respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to understand why the power to immediately direct emergency response must remain at the state level.

Governors are in the best positions to know their regions' vulnerabilities.

This provision, which was slipped into the defense bill without input from those it affects, should be discarded.