FEMA May Never Be Fully Staffed

Help wanted: Tropical Storm Alberto ushered in the 2006 hurricane season with a splash a couple of weeks ago, heralding the beginning of what will likely be an active period for tropical cyclones over the next five months. Alberto also marked the passing of an arbitrary deadline — when the Federal Emergency Management Agency was supposed to have a full complement of staff.

According to GoveExec.com, the agency has responded to missing its third deadline by announcing that it would no longer set deadlines for full employment.

In a briefing Friday with reporters, FEMA Director R. David Paulison said the agency has hired about 85 percent of the workers it needs. This is the same percentage he offered when asked by a reporter May 23 about progress toward a goal of reaching 95 percent of capacity before June 1, when the hurricane season began.

Initially, the agency set a mid-May deadline for meeting that goal. Paulison pushed that date back to June 1, and the agency further delayed it to July, according to a FEMA fact sheet given to reporters last month.

Paulison took responsibility for the delays even though he’s been on the job less than a month. But his taking the blame while offering no solutions didn’t sit well with the House Homeland Security and Government Reform committees, which recently assumed oversight of FEMA because of its continued staff vacancies.

“One thing that the Department of Homeland Security has kept consistent is its inability to be straightforward,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the homeland security panel’s ranking member. “We really have a case of ‘FEMA gone wild’ over there, if leaders can’t even give us a straight answer on how many people are on staff and when we will have an effective fully staffed FEMA.”

Well, if the goal is “an effective fully staffed FEMA,” don’t hold your breath. Heck, those of us who live in Hurricane Alley would settle for just an “effective FEMA.”

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