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Cities Worried About Federal Disaster Response Plan
by Leslie Wollack
State and local officials and some members of Congress greeted a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) draft update of the plan for coordinating disaster preparedness and response with skepticism and dismay last week at a hearing before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Federal Buildings and Emergency Management. Critics of the plan object because it does not take Congressional reforms of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into account.
The draft National Response Framework released by DHS provides guidelines for coordinating federal and intergovernmental responses to national emergencies and was mandated by Congress last year.
“We are deeply troubled that the critiques of the plan we are receiving go to the Congressional mandate in the Post-Katrina Act itself, suggesting that the department ‘just doesn’t get it,’ or does not want to get it,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), chair of the subcommittee.
“We will listen carefully and objectively to testimony from the administration and particularly to their defense against the caustic criticism of the experts,” she said. “However, we are a democratic nation of laws, and no executive branch agency, including the Department of Homeland Security, gets to pick and choose which laws to follow. We do not intend to forget that the reason Hurricane Katrina response was such a disaster was in no small part because of the lack of a coherent plan for marshalling the resources available locally, at the state level and at the federal level.”
Norton and other lawmakers said they will reevaluate their decision to keep the embattled FEMA within DHS. Congress mandated DHS to update the National Response Plan last year in the wake of criticism over the handling of Hurricane Katrina as part of a larger discussion over the role of FEMA. Congress spent months trying to reach agreement on the role of FEMA and ultimately voted to keep FEMA in DHS, but strengthen its independent role and clarify that its administrator is the primary federal official for managing and coordinating federal response to disasters.
“Given the specific changes to the National Response Plan mandated by law, I find it particularly surprising the new plan does not mention the FEMA reform bill at all,” said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), the subcommittee’s ranking minority leader. “Given the critical testimony of our expert witnesses and our committee’s own review, it appears the department has a lot more work [to do] to develop an effective National Response Plan.”
At last week’s hearing on the draft National Response Framework, witnesses representing state and local governments criticized the guidelines for turning its back on the FEMA reforms enacted by Congress last year and creating greater confusion on intergovernmental coordination of disaster response.
FEMA Administrator David Paulison stated that the plan is still in the draft stage and the agency was taking comments for 30 days to respond to criticisms raised by Congress and state and local governments.
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