Editorial: Clinton model best for FEMA

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2006 | 12:30 p.m.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., mildly criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency in June 2002 as he presided over the confirmation hearing of Michael Brown to become the agency's deputy director.

Nevertheless, he expressed confidence in Brown's ability to help turn the agency into a model of responsiveness and one that efficiently coordinates with state and local officials. "I will certainly support your nomination," Lieberman told Brown at the end of the hearing.

Brown easily won confirmation, with neither Lieberman nor any other senator on the Governmental Affairs Committee raising alarm over Brown's lack of experience in managing emergencies.

In 2003 the agency's director, Joseph Allbaugh, a Bush political appointee who also lacked emergency management experience, resigned after FEMA was absorbed into the Homeland Security Department. Brown then assumed the director's job without a confirmation hearing because hearings are held only for department heads, and Homeland Security was the department, with FEMA simply being a subordinate agency within it.

Following the lead of Allbaugh, who had hired him, Brown chose Republican political figures for top jobs at FEMA, rather than experienced emergency managers. Hurricane Katrina showed the danger of having political cronies heading such a critical agency. Brown resigned within days of his agency's inept response, and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff remains on the hot seat with Congress.

Particularly enraged with how all of this turned out is Lieberman, who had placed such confidence in Brown. "FEMA has become, to many people in America, and particularly the Gulf Coast, a joke, a four-letter word," Lieberman said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The senator added, "It is time for FEMA as we know it to go. It is time to dissolve and rebuild it within the Homeland Security Department."

We agree with his harsh assessment. Five months after Katrina, FEMA is still bungling its response to the disaster. But we differ on one point. It should be pulled out of Homeland Security. President Bill Clinton elevated FEMA to his Cabinet as an independent agency and placed people with real-life emergency management experience in charge. The agency in those days received praise from all quarters. This is the model we believe should be used in restructuring this vital agency.