The devastating conditions in the Gulf Coast have left many Americans asking, “Why did the government fail when Katrina hit?” “The answer to this question can be linked to the organizational changes that occurred in the federal government after September 11, 2001,” says Nancy Staudt, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and expert on government decision-making. “At that time, the federal government began to worry about fragmented and uncoordinated relief efforts and sought to create a more streamlined approach to dealing with national disasters. In 2002, President Bush led a bipartisan effort to create a new Cabinet level Department called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), primarily to undertake counter-terrorist activities.”
The DHS consolidated 22 agencies, 180,000 employees, 22 different resource offices, 8 payroll systems, and 19 financial management centers. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), set up to respond to natural and man-made disasters, was one of the agencies moved into the DHS.
“Prior to this consolidation, FEMA was an autonomous agency with a director that reported directly to the President of the United States, but after consolidation the head of FEMA reported to the Secretary of the DHS,” Staudt says. “FEMA was placed in a mammoth bureaucracy with less authority to respond to natural disasters; its power was diluted by the growing concerns for terrorism.”
According to Staudt, author of “Redundant Tax and Spending Programs: How Should the Government Organize Itself to Best Serve the Poor?”, top-down coordination efforts like those observed in the creation of the DHS rest on the notion that a single leader can better serve the nation in times of need, but when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the new hierarchy created serious problems of its own.
“DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown did not have the necessary expertise to undertake emergency relief efforts,” she says. “Mr. Chertoff is quite accomplished, but he has experience as a lawyer and judge and no evident practice responding to natural disasters. For advice on these matters, he relied on Mr. Brown, who is also a lawyer with very little experience responding to domestic emergencies. Although the DHS has a number of internal documents that establish coordination protocols in time of emergencies, without the necessary experience to undertake the task it could not unfold effectively.”
Staudt notes that on the day that Katrina hit New Orleans, Mr. Brown urged first responders not to respond to the disaster without a formal request from lawfully dispatched state and local authorities established under federal and state aid agreements. Again on August 29th, he issued a second press release instructing volunteers not to report to the affected areas, but rather to send cash to various volunteer agencies.
“In short, Mr. Brown started the relief efforts by tying the hands of the very people who could assist most speedily,” she says. “In fact, two days after Katrina hit and after the levees broke, Mr. Brown issued yet another press release that instructed individuals how to avoid dealing with dishonest contractors in their rebuilding efforts—still apparently ignoring the brutal situation that had begun to unfold.
“After Katrina, it appears it was a serious error to fold FEMA into a giant bureaucracy intended to address terrorist activities. FEMA should go back to being an autonomous agency, headed by an expert in emergency relief who responds directly to the President.”