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<DIV><FONT size=4><EM>Washington Post</EM>:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT size=5>Leaders Lacking Disaster
Experience<BR></FONT></STRONG>'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited<BR>
<P><FONT size=-1>By Spencer S. Hsu<BR>Washington Post Staff Writer<BR>Friday,
September 9, 2005; A01<BR></FONT>
<P><NITF>
<P>Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their
posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency
whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.</P>
<P>FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick
J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to
President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation,
according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a
former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce
official who was once a political operative.</P>
<P>Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World
Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman --
who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively --
have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers,
according to current and former officials.</P>
<P>Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for
natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are
working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.</P>
<P>Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to
Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as
a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift
through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane
Katrina.</P>
<P>"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local
governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National
Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people
in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."</P>
<P>Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it
"overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins
(R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private
counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.</P>
<P>They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February,
and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and
former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.</P>
<P>But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with
Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the
flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after
a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director
Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of
Brown's.</P>
<P>Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to
Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and
then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce
Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.</P>
<P>Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott
Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media.</P>
<P>David I. Maurstad, who stepped down as Nebraska lieutenant governor in 2001
to join FEMA, has served as acting director for risk reduction and federal
insurance administrator since June 2004. Daniel A. Craig, a onetime political
fundraiser and campaign adviser, came to FEMA in 2001 from the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, where he directed the eastern regional office, after working as a
lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.</P>
<P>Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown has managed
more than 160 natural disasters as FEMA general counsel and deputy director
since 2001, "hands-on experience [that] cannot be understated. Other leadership
at FEMA brings particular skill sets -- policy management leadership, for
example."</P>
<P>The agency has a deep bench of career professionals, said FEMA spokeswoman
Nicol Andrews, including two dozen senior field coordinators and Gil Jamieson,
director of the National Incident Management System. "Simply because folks who
have left the agency have a disagreement with how it's being run doesn't
necessarily indicate that there is a lack of experience leading it," she
said.</P>
<P>Andrews said the "acting" designation for regional officials is a designation
that signifies that they are FEMA civil servants -- not political
appointees.</P>
<P>Touring the wrecked Gulf Coast with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael
Chertoff yesterday, Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA leaders, saying,
"We're always trying to strike the right balance" between political appointees
and "career professionals that fill the jobs underneath them."</P>
<P>But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced
disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of
leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's
ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional
critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in
2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded
into the Department of Homeland Security.</P>
<P>Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said,
extending from Washington to localities.</P>
<P>FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and
leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland
School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it
failed."</P>
<P>Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of
California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council,
said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but
competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking.</P>
<P>"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said.
"You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the
president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is,
and who understand how emergency management works."</P>
<P>The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a
nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of
28 agencies studied in 2003.</P>
<P>In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the
American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA
professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or
good.</P>
<P>An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.</P>
<P>More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at
the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the
Department of Homeland Security.</P></NITF><!-- start the copyright for the articles -->
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