Editorial: Bad news comes in threes

Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006 | 7:42 a.m.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office delivered a triple whammy this week when it released three separate reports that show the United States still is unprepared to deal with future disasters or to even track the $88 billion in aid doled out after last year's Gulf Coast hurricanes.

The reports released Wednesday reveal that a lack of planning and oversight still exist among the agencies charged with rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged areas and devising protections against all types of disasters in the future.

In one report the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress, found that after Hurricane Katrina the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used a mix of permanent and temporary stopgap methods to fix some 169 miles of damaged levees and flood walls in an effort to restore the areas to pre-hurricane conditions by June of this year.

Much of the work was past deadline and over budget, the GAO reports, saying "the Corps appears to be following a piecemeal approach, similar to its past practice of building projects without giving sufficient attention" to "fully considering whether the projects will provide an integrated level of hurricane protection."

In another report the GAO said that "no one agency or central collection point exists" that would allow the federal government to track how $88 billion in Hurricane Katrina aid was spent by the 23 different agencies that received the money.

And in a third report, the GAO says that federal leadership and lines of communications still are lacking, and that although the Homeland Security Department says it has made changes, "there is little information available" as to whether those changes have been implemented.

The GAO's reports include at least a dozen pages of recommendations for the Bush administration and Congress. Among them are improving leadership, creating clear chains of command and making sure that there are adequate controls and oversight to see that money and rebuilding efforts are effective. Federal officials and lawmakers must heed the GAO's call. We have seen what being totally unprepared for a disaster looks like, and we don't ever want to see it - or pay for it - again.