Right Voices

From The New York Times:

AS we are all aware,” James Lee Witt told Congress in April 1996, when he was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “disasters are very political events.”

There is much truth to Mr. Witt’s statement. Research on the spending patterns of the emergency management agency shows that, to a significant degree, the agency is influenced by political concerns that are distinct from the suffering and destruction wrought by natural disasters, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Although declaring a disaster should be clear-cut and above politics, the legislation that governs FEMA gives the president much discretion to decide whether an event is a disaster that qualifies for assistance. Upon receiving a request by a state’s governor, the president may declare a “major disaster” if a natural catastrophe “causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance.”

While no one would doubt that a disaster of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina deserves the full commitment of the federal government, the language in the FEMA law is vague enough to count two feet of snow in Ohio as a major disaster, as was the case last December.

Indeed, the law specifically prohibits the use of an “arithmetic formula or sliding scale” to deny assistance. So, disaster requests are not evaluated based on standard quantitative evidence; instead, declarations involve subjective judgment.

Not surprisingly, in this vacuum presidents have displayed a tendency to declare more disasters in years when they face re-election. ..

I guess this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, but it is a nice look at governmental spending in a time of crisis that’s easy to read and understand. More importantly, it shows the need for some restructuring and a little less governmental control. Rather than pointing fingers at what went wrong with Katrina, maybe somebody should start looking at how to make FEMA more effective for the future.