No FEMA director or administrator has ever resigned or departed from the job voluntarily. But suppose a crisis of conscience did occur with that result. W. Craig Fugate has pretty much had a successful tenure as Administrator of FEMA since May of 2009 but he might be a candidate.
Why?
FEW anywhere understand that FEMA is not the federal safety net for either domestic crisis management, prevention, response, recovery and mitigation. It is still even with expansion of numbers a relatively small underfunded federal agencies whose major partners, the OFAs [other federal agencies] are experiencing rapid decline in their preparedness capability and this will accelerate over the next calendar year. The same holds true for FEMA's state and their local government partners. And now Administrator Fugate advocates FEMA policy and the Stafford Act being brought into alignment with SCOTUS rulings and USA history and treating the Federally Recognized Native American Tribes as being direct recipients of FEMA grants and agreements. I support this effort by the way. The problem of course is that the 500+ federally recognized tribes have almost no Emergency Management or HS capability and won't have it until built over at least a decade. So the complex administration of FEMA's efforts to have full fledged partners to help out is still a long way off and promises to recede even further into the future.
So perhaps W. Craig Fugate needs to get the Administration and Congress to address the issues raised by FEMA not being the safety net, and merely a small cooperative and collaborative agency that does not do that particularly well either.
Time runs out on Fugate whether because of a catastrophic event or whatever! Hope he survives and can address the issues underlying this post in a successful manner. Otherwise by by like all others who held his position before him.
