Many know that I think the forthcoming Commerce Department termination under President Obama's Reorganization Proposals will also impact the NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program] and the Mitigation % Insurance Directorate in FEMA.
But I am now willing to predict that FEMA's REPP [Radiological Emergency Preparedness Program] may well be on its way to EPA the organization who EPZ PAGs [Protective action guidance] determine the perimeter of that zone. FDA of course has its own PAGs that determine the 50 mile demarcation for the INGESTION Pathway for food and animals.
Why this prediction? As each day passes it is becoming more and more obvious that the FUKISHIMA events may be a MOM [maximum of maximums] for Japanese society and culture at least for this century. To be brief, already looking like beyond the capability of that very capable developed country to handle.
Japan studied in some detail FEMA's REPP and determined for a variety of reasons, some corrupt, that it was unnecessary to develop an equivalent in Japan. France also made that determination.
So as we pass the one year mark, and FEMA's REPP established originally under President James Earl Carter in 1980 enters its 4th decade the question arises as to its staffing and expertise.
EPA does have an office of Emergency Response led by a capable up-thorugh-the-ranks SES, Deborah Dietrich, and that office probably should have had REPP from the onset except that FEMA was victim based on its inability to understand what was involved and defend itself. The original MOU between FEMA and NRC was excuted by NRC personnel detailed from NRC when REPP was established. Marshall Sanders, a retired b-52 pilot was one of the NRC detailees and he stayed on at FEMA until his second retirement.
As my sworn deposition at the Seabrook Power Station, and my several days of sworn testimony before the ASLB, this amazing bit of bureacratic corruption apparently bothered no one but me.
At least EPA employes Health Physicists as FEMA and DHS do not.
So all it would take is a revised Executive Order, including revision of E.O. 12241 to give the lead to EPA. Based on what we now know from FUKSIMA this revision and reassignment of functions and activities could occur immediately since the REPP is funded totally by USER FEES and their are few budget implications.
Showing posts with label DHS/FEMA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DHS/FEMA. Show all posts
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
The 10 Most Important Management Calls IN FEMA History!
I am going to utilize the period from April 1, 1979 to September 1, 2011 for this listing even though there legally was no FEMA between March 1,2003 and March 31, 2007.
So here are my top ten management calls in all of FEMA history!
1. John Macy's insistence that FEMA appointees and civil servants should be generalists and not expert in some field.
2. The failure of Louis O. Guiffrida to document publically that most of his new Preparedness and Civil Defense initiatives stemmed from Carter classified directives.
3. Director Guiffrida's decision to refer to DOJ a law suit over flood plain management against NOLA, and Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes in Louisian in 1981.
4. Director Guiffrida's cooperation in establishing the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board and helping NSC issue NSDD-47 (1982)!
5. Director Julius Becton's not caving to NRC when his Region II staff found the first Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant exercise inadequate for FEMA to give a reasonable assurance finding to LILCO and the NRC and defending that decision in the lengthiest adminstrative law proceeding in NRC history.
6. Director Julius Becton ordering and assisting in establishing and completion of the First and Last FEMA Capability Assessment (1988)!
7. Grant Peterson taking the Federal Response Plan for Response to a Catastrophic Earthquake(adopted 1987) and turning it into the FEDERAL RESPONSE Plan (adopted 1992)over the opposition of his senior career civil servants!
8. Director Wallace B. Stinckney's decision to ask President George H.W. Bush to relieve him of any role as PFO in Hurricane Andrew (1992).
9. Director James Lee Witt's decision to remove the personnel security clearances from over 40% of FEMA staff.
10. Director Joseph Allbaugh's decision to allow the George W. Bush administration to reduce FEMA staff by over 60%!
So here are my top ten management calls in all of FEMA history!
1. John Macy's insistence that FEMA appointees and civil servants should be generalists and not expert in some field.
2. The failure of Louis O. Guiffrida to document publically that most of his new Preparedness and Civil Defense initiatives stemmed from Carter classified directives.
3. Director Guiffrida's decision to refer to DOJ a law suit over flood plain management against NOLA, and Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes in Louisian in 1981.
4. Director Guiffrida's cooperation in establishing the Emergency Mobilization Preparedness Board and helping NSC issue NSDD-47 (1982)!
5. Director Julius Becton's not caving to NRC when his Region II staff found the first Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant exercise inadequate for FEMA to give a reasonable assurance finding to LILCO and the NRC and defending that decision in the lengthiest adminstrative law proceeding in NRC history.
6. Director Julius Becton ordering and assisting in establishing and completion of the First and Last FEMA Capability Assessment (1988)!
7. Grant Peterson taking the Federal Response Plan for Response to a Catastrophic Earthquake(adopted 1987) and turning it into the FEDERAL RESPONSE Plan (adopted 1992)over the opposition of his senior career civil servants!
8. Director Wallace B. Stinckney's decision to ask President George H.W. Bush to relieve him of any role as PFO in Hurricane Andrew (1992).
9. Director James Lee Witt's decision to remove the personnel security clearances from over 40% of FEMA staff.
10. Director Joseph Allbaugh's decision to allow the George W. Bush administration to reduce FEMA staff by over 60%!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Where Have I been?
My last post on this blog was on June 23rd and now July 23rd. I spent the last 4 weeks visiting friends and visiting spots I had not seen in New England for almost 40 years. But much has been happening in FEMA land and elsewhere in that time. So gradually will be catching up.
The biggest news from and about FEMA is that the President's DRF [Disaster Relief Fund] is dangerously low as we enter the heights of hurricane season. Let's play a game however and ask whether anyone knows (including FEMA officials) whether FEMA has ever paid out relief for drought and heat as a declared Presidential disaster.
Winners are entitled to visit me here where I live on the Little Wicomico River near the mouth of the Potomac. They can stay until tired of my shrillness and Nostrodomus like predictions many of which have proved only too accurate over the last year. And yes, Greece will declare a default because now despite efforts at rescue the rescuers waited only too long to conduct the rescue. Hey the Drachma will be back before the end of the year and time to visit Greece and its splendors of the present and past. A great people and attended a Greek Festival in New England on my pilgrimage.
So here's to returning to blogging.
The biggest news from and about FEMA is that the President's DRF [Disaster Relief Fund] is dangerously low as we enter the heights of hurricane season. Let's play a game however and ask whether anyone knows (including FEMA officials) whether FEMA has ever paid out relief for drought and heat as a declared Presidential disaster.
Winners are entitled to visit me here where I live on the Little Wicomico River near the mouth of the Potomac. They can stay until tired of my shrillness and Nostrodomus like predictions many of which have proved only too accurate over the last year. And yes, Greece will declare a default because now despite efforts at rescue the rescuers waited only too long to conduct the rescue. Hey the Drachma will be back before the end of the year and time to visit Greece and its splendors of the present and past. A great people and attended a Greek Festival in New England on my pilgrimage.
So here's to returning to blogging.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
DHS 8th Birthday
Today is DHS' Eighth (8) birthday as it doors opened for real on March 1, 2003. Still a child.
FEMA's 32 Birthday is actually on April 1, 2011 so still a month off.
I am no longer willing to predict that FEMA in some form will outlast DHS. Why? Betting both are gone by the end of the 2nd decade of the 20th Century.
Basic reasons: First, not learning organizations. Second, not agile organizations.
Hoping I am wrong of course because both have day jobs and nighttime jobs in the Executive Branch.
The departure of Senator Joesph Lieberman in 2012 from the US Senate and the likelihood of Republican control of that body almost ensure that a total re-evaluation of the DHS/FEMA paradigm will occur.
FEMA's 32 Birthday is actually on April 1, 2011 so still a month off.
I am no longer willing to predict that FEMA in some form will outlast DHS. Why? Betting both are gone by the end of the 2nd decade of the 20th Century.
Basic reasons: First, not learning organizations. Second, not agile organizations.
Hoping I am wrong of course because both have day jobs and nighttime jobs in the Executive Branch.
The departure of Senator Joesph Lieberman in 2012 from the US Senate and the likelihood of Republican control of that body almost ensure that a total re-evaluation of the DHS/FEMA paradigm will occur.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Cooperation and Collaboration
I have long been an advocate of a cooperative and collaborative culture for EM as opposed to a top-down Command and Control culture. There may well be reasons for that cultural approach also to apply to DHS generally but my focus here is on FEMA. Cooperation and collaboration in a federal system would seem to be a given but because of failures of the field of Political Science and Public Adminstration to really analyze the effectiveness of different approaches to the "wicked" issues of crisis management, resilience, and other aspects of large scale incidents and events the cupboard is largely bare when practioners are faced with documenting the basics of developing or implementing or running a cooperative and collaborative culture.
In my twenty years in FEMA from 1979 to 1999 I was always amazed at the stovepipes in the organization, some of which almost destroyed FEMA. Examples, the national security effort, and attempts to be a major policy player in that arena by at least one FEMA Director, were often undercut by efforts to enhance FEMA authority vis a vis other departments and agencies in the civil agency structure. This usually took the route of trying to impose FEMA as the answer to the "who is in charge" question even while trying to avoid by plausible deniability that was the intent of programmatic officals. Now this may come as a surprise to some who always argued that the civil programs of FEMA were undercut by the national security types. That did happen occassionally but less often than you might imaging. The national security personnel in FEMA were just trying to be at the table on major national security issued impacting domestic affairs, not dictate or even be a policy leader. And of course as briefed in previous posts, one of the great smoke and mirrors efforts of all times, was the use of the federal civil defense program, which did not include COOP or COG, as the FEMA lead on national security issues. It never was and never would be for a variety of reasons. The real national security driver in FEMA was always COG and COOP. Well my effort here is to try and explain briefly the lack of skill and competence of the other FEMA programs, functions, and activities when dealing with the WH and other departments and agencies on policy development, implementation, and operations.
The concept of the FCO imbedded in the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 [Public Law 93-288] was a reflection of the success of the first real FCO in history. That person was Associate Director of OMB Frank Carlucci, who incidentally was principle drafter of Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1973 breaking up the former OEP [Office of Emergency Preparedness]! Carlucci and Donald Rumsfeld also active in the Nixon Administration as Director of the Cost of Living Council leading the wage-price-rent freeze announced in 1971 and Ambassador to NATO, were wrestling buddies from Princeton Univesity days. Both of course went on to become SECDEFs with Rumsfeld doing that trick twice.
To continue the story. Carlucci during Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes was the go-to guy for the President and his clout was revealed when essentially he fired George Romney for failing to accomplish housing policy during the aftermath of Agnes in the Lycoming Valley of Pennsylvania.
So the concept got imbedded in the 1974 Disaster act. I always aggravated FEMA and its former disaster predecessor agency by arguing for a regulation concerning delegations to the FCO and an effort to address his/her powers and authority and responsibilities. That still has not really been done adquately. And of course I further aggravated the powers that be in that I stated my position was that FCO's were WH appointees, perhaps sometimes delegated to the Director of FEMA, but that the WH could make non-FEMA or non-FDAA personnel FCOs!
And then the problems with PFO concept arose out of HSPD-5 and Hurricane Katrina. This still has not been resolved to my satisfaction but that is not my story here. The FCO concept you would think would be regarded as a cooperative and collaborative position since the word "coordinating" has its place in the term. Yet the Carlucci model, more command and control still tends to predominate. What most don't realize is that NIXON gave Carlucci such huge bureacratic power and leaway was because he had bigger chips on the table in 1972 but did not want the Agnes effort to become a katrina like effort in that election year. Besides he and Kissinger has some traveling to do including kowtowing to the leaders of the Middle Kingdom! Carlucci's real job was to make sure that NIXON did not lose votes, not the first or last time that disaster operations have had a political flavor. And Agnes was a huge huge event. Crossing multiple states from the GOM to upstate NY.
What I found interesting is that FCO's only had formal training under Director James Lee Witt. I briefed two groups of them on their legal authority as FCOs and to some degree this post reflects that briefing. I was never asked back after those two sessions. Oddly, numerous members of those two groups later told me I gave the best briefing they ever recieved in their entire time as FCO's. Well these were largely GS-15s so perhaps they were more limited in background then some I briefed.
And of course the relationships between FCO's and FEMA Regional Directors has never been worked out to my satisfaction.
By what really fascinated me was when I was brought into the General Counsel's office to discuss the issue of whether FEMA could direct another federal agency or department to do something. An early independent FEMA GC had opined that FEMA could even direct the DOD to do things in a disaster. Of course there is authority for the President to direct other federal agencies to do things in a declared disaster or emergency [even without reimbursement] and in a highly technical sense that authority was delegated in the past to the independent FEMA's Directors, and now to the Secretary DHS. But in reality most agencies budgets are so tight that they cannot carry out mission assignments without reimbursement and in fact DOD is on record as refusing absolutely to do so. Of course if a President pushed that might be different in the short run but my guess is that authority is meaningless because money is what disaster relief is all about. And perhaps accurate information also.
So when invited with no time for preparation to a largely confrontational meeting in the GC's office with very senior appointees and program officials I was asked to expound on these topics. So never reluctant to leap into the fray and say what I actually thought here was my position:
Mission assignements were largely to be administered as cooperative and collaborative efforts. The task or mission or goal was to be laid out for the accepting department or agency but they using their expertise and skill set were free to design exactly how they were going to do it and to do it that way without being second guessed by FEMA. And more important that FEMA and the FCO's had absolutely NO authority to direct the specifics of how another department or agency accomplished their mission assignments. By the way the FCO classes I taught all breathed a sign of relief when I told them this position. I equated mission assignments to the fact that most federal agencies had no authority to recommend or promote a specific product or company as meeting their requirements. Instead, departments and agencies that were given standard setting authority, and DHS and FEMA have almost no authority to do that, had to indicate what performance standard was adquate and the various vendors and contractors were free to meet that standard any way they could. Clearly there are some cases where specific product testing does occur in the federal government, in particular FDA for both ethical drugs and medical devices.
For the purposes of the meeting described, and training sessions, there appeared to be some nodding of heads to my verbiage. In fact to my knowledge, despite as always my request that the issues raised be discussed and resolved preferably in writing still wander ghost like through FEMA and DHS today.
And despite the fact that wrestling is masked as a team sport it is IMO a highly individual sport and not one in which collaboration and cooperation is highly regarded. So much for Don and Frank!
In my twenty years in FEMA from 1979 to 1999 I was always amazed at the stovepipes in the organization, some of which almost destroyed FEMA. Examples, the national security effort, and attempts to be a major policy player in that arena by at least one FEMA Director, were often undercut by efforts to enhance FEMA authority vis a vis other departments and agencies in the civil agency structure. This usually took the route of trying to impose FEMA as the answer to the "who is in charge" question even while trying to avoid by plausible deniability that was the intent of programmatic officals. Now this may come as a surprise to some who always argued that the civil programs of FEMA were undercut by the national security types. That did happen occassionally but less often than you might imaging. The national security personnel in FEMA were just trying to be at the table on major national security issued impacting domestic affairs, not dictate or even be a policy leader. And of course as briefed in previous posts, one of the great smoke and mirrors efforts of all times, was the use of the federal civil defense program, which did not include COOP or COG, as the FEMA lead on national security issues. It never was and never would be for a variety of reasons. The real national security driver in FEMA was always COG and COOP. Well my effort here is to try and explain briefly the lack of skill and competence of the other FEMA programs, functions, and activities when dealing with the WH and other departments and agencies on policy development, implementation, and operations.
The concept of the FCO imbedded in the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 [Public Law 93-288] was a reflection of the success of the first real FCO in history. That person was Associate Director of OMB Frank Carlucci, who incidentally was principle drafter of Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1973 breaking up the former OEP [Office of Emergency Preparedness]! Carlucci and Donald Rumsfeld also active in the Nixon Administration as Director of the Cost of Living Council leading the wage-price-rent freeze announced in 1971 and Ambassador to NATO, were wrestling buddies from Princeton Univesity days. Both of course went on to become SECDEFs with Rumsfeld doing that trick twice.
To continue the story. Carlucci during Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes was the go-to guy for the President and his clout was revealed when essentially he fired George Romney for failing to accomplish housing policy during the aftermath of Agnes in the Lycoming Valley of Pennsylvania.
So the concept got imbedded in the 1974 Disaster act. I always aggravated FEMA and its former disaster predecessor agency by arguing for a regulation concerning delegations to the FCO and an effort to address his/her powers and authority and responsibilities. That still has not really been done adquately. And of course I further aggravated the powers that be in that I stated my position was that FCO's were WH appointees, perhaps sometimes delegated to the Director of FEMA, but that the WH could make non-FEMA or non-FDAA personnel FCOs!
And then the problems with PFO concept arose out of HSPD-5 and Hurricane Katrina. This still has not been resolved to my satisfaction but that is not my story here. The FCO concept you would think would be regarded as a cooperative and collaborative position since the word "coordinating" has its place in the term. Yet the Carlucci model, more command and control still tends to predominate. What most don't realize is that NIXON gave Carlucci such huge bureacratic power and leaway was because he had bigger chips on the table in 1972 but did not want the Agnes effort to become a katrina like effort in that election year. Besides he and Kissinger has some traveling to do including kowtowing to the leaders of the Middle Kingdom! Carlucci's real job was to make sure that NIXON did not lose votes, not the first or last time that disaster operations have had a political flavor. And Agnes was a huge huge event. Crossing multiple states from the GOM to upstate NY.
What I found interesting is that FCO's only had formal training under Director James Lee Witt. I briefed two groups of them on their legal authority as FCOs and to some degree this post reflects that briefing. I was never asked back after those two sessions. Oddly, numerous members of those two groups later told me I gave the best briefing they ever recieved in their entire time as FCO's. Well these were largely GS-15s so perhaps they were more limited in background then some I briefed.
And of course the relationships between FCO's and FEMA Regional Directors has never been worked out to my satisfaction.
By what really fascinated me was when I was brought into the General Counsel's office to discuss the issue of whether FEMA could direct another federal agency or department to do something. An early independent FEMA GC had opined that FEMA could even direct the DOD to do things in a disaster. Of course there is authority for the President to direct other federal agencies to do things in a declared disaster or emergency [even without reimbursement] and in a highly technical sense that authority was delegated in the past to the independent FEMA's Directors, and now to the Secretary DHS. But in reality most agencies budgets are so tight that they cannot carry out mission assignments without reimbursement and in fact DOD is on record as refusing absolutely to do so. Of course if a President pushed that might be different in the short run but my guess is that authority is meaningless because money is what disaster relief is all about. And perhaps accurate information also.
So when invited with no time for preparation to a largely confrontational meeting in the GC's office with very senior appointees and program officials I was asked to expound on these topics. So never reluctant to leap into the fray and say what I actually thought here was my position:
Mission assignements were largely to be administered as cooperative and collaborative efforts. The task or mission or goal was to be laid out for the accepting department or agency but they using their expertise and skill set were free to design exactly how they were going to do it and to do it that way without being second guessed by FEMA. And more important that FEMA and the FCO's had absolutely NO authority to direct the specifics of how another department or agency accomplished their mission assignments. By the way the FCO classes I taught all breathed a sign of relief when I told them this position. I equated mission assignments to the fact that most federal agencies had no authority to recommend or promote a specific product or company as meeting their requirements. Instead, departments and agencies that were given standard setting authority, and DHS and FEMA have almost no authority to do that, had to indicate what performance standard was adquate and the various vendors and contractors were free to meet that standard any way they could. Clearly there are some cases where specific product testing does occur in the federal government, in particular FDA for both ethical drugs and medical devices.
For the purposes of the meeting described, and training sessions, there appeared to be some nodding of heads to my verbiage. In fact to my knowledge, despite as always my request that the issues raised be discussed and resolved preferably in writing still wander ghost like through FEMA and DHS today.
And despite the fact that wrestling is masked as a team sport it is IMO a highly individual sport and not one in which collaboration and cooperation is highly regarded. So much for Don and Frank!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Intergovernmental Relations
As Hurricane Earl approaches East Coast of the US time for a repeat post from this blogger. Here goes:
Portions of this article were previously published in BEST PRACTICES In Emergency Services, Vol.6 No.8, August 2003
The Department of Homeland Security and Its Relationship to Local Government
On November 25, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-296). The enactment came after a formal legislative process that ran at full speed after the President reversed course and announced on June 6, 2002 that he supported creation of the new Cabinet Department. A version of enacted bill was submitted by the Administration on June 18, 2002, and introduced on behalf of the Administration.
This time frame left little opportunity for lobbying by governmental entities, especially State and local governments. It did allow for a number of potential vendors, and interest groups to heavily and effectively lobby during this time frame. The President’s bill was drafted in intense secrecy by (1) Tom Ridge; (2) Andrew H. Card, the White House Chief of Staff; (3) Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House Counsel; (4) Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., the Director of OMB, and (5) Joshua B. Bolten, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (now the Director of OMB succeeding Mitch Daniels). All are lawyers. None except Tom Ridge had held elected state-wide office and none have backgrounds as first responders. The President’s bill was submitted to Congress on June 18th and introduced by request in the House of Representatives on June 26th as H.R. 5005 was referred to a Select Committee chaired by Richard Armey (R-Tex.) the Majority Leader of the House. It passed the House on July 26th, and after consideration by the Senate with amendments passed the Senate on November 19th. The House then voted approval of the Senate amendments and it was enrolled and sent to the President who signed it on November 25th.
The Act’s legislative history is short. Even prior to the events of September 11th, 2001, a series of Congressionally mandated Commissions (Bremer, Deutch, Hart-Rudman, and Gilmore) had recommended organizational restructuring of the Executive Branch to more effectively and efficiently prepare for and respond to terrorism and the potential the terrorists would employ weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These reports are available from me at vlg338@yahoo.com. I have recommended indirectly to Lee Hamilton that the Hart-Rudman Commission reassemble to produce a comprehensive status report on their recommendations as we approach a full decade since they last reported. It should also be specifically noted that a bill passed the House of Representatives (H.R. 4210 in July 2000, Second Session 106th Congress) that had been orchestrated by Representative Tilly Fowler (R-Florida). The Senate did not act on that bill. The original bill as introduced is available on this blog under FEMA Historical Materials and on the FAS web sites at http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/fema/index/html
Five Under Secretary positions were created in the new statute with three of direct concern to local government. First, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate composed primarily of the former Federal Emergency Management Agency. Secondly, the largest directorate by number of employees, the Border and Transportation Security Directorate which also include the former Office of National Preparedness from FEMA (this office had been established by administrative order to implement a Presidential initiative on May 8th, 2001, and is being returned to the Preparedness Division of the EP&R Directorate on July 13th , 2003 and its staff possibly dispersed).The Office of National Preparedness had administered the EMPG grants authorized under Title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 100-707) It also included the Office of Domestic Preparedness (headed by a Presidential appointee, Susan Mencer, a former FBI agent, from the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, which had provided grants to State and local governments under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-132) and the so-called Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act (Title XIV of the 1996 DoD Authorization Act (Public Law 104-201), or under authority of various Commerce, Justice, State Appropriation Acts. Some of this money had been passed through the United States Fire Administration, part of FEMA, which was authorized in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and authority of Presidential Directive 39. It should be noted that there is an inherent statutory conflict between the EP&R Directorates response authority for the federal establishment under Title V of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Office of Domestic Preparedness under Section 430 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It is of great interest that the responsibility for the development and implementation of the mandated National Response Plan (HSPD-5) was originally assigned to Admiral Loy (Ret.) and the Transportation Security Administration. Admiral Loy is now the Deputy Secretary for the Department. Now plan development and integration is located in a new Integration Center reporting to the Director.
A third component of the new department of interest was the Office of State and Local Government Coordination established by Section 801 of the Act. At the moment, this Office has no grant money but Secretary Ridge has testified (May 1st 2003) that all State and local grants should come through this office. As Ridge says “One-stop shopping.” Ridge notified Congress on January 21, 2004 that all state and local grants would be awarded by the Office of State and Local Coordination to be renamed the Office of State and Local Preparedness and Coordination.
It should be noted that there are in addition the three other directorates headed by Under Secretaries that are of less immediate concern to local governments and first responders. These are (1) the Under Secretary for Science and Technology; (2) the Under Secretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection; and (3) the Under Secretary for Management.
Monies for State and local government for the three years ending September 11, 2004, will have come in both annual appropriation acts and supplemental appropriation acts. Promised originally for State and local first responders shortly after September 11, 2001, was the amount of $3.5 Billion. It will only be possible to determine actually outlays after September 11, 2004, but it appears that that amount will only be reached, if at all, by including the bioterrorism preparedness monies authorized under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, Public Law 107-188; June 12, 2002). Perhaps it makes common sense to include these monies even though the public health system, not traditional first responders, has been the recipient.
Secretary Tom Ridge has stated in various speeches that if the President’s FY 04 budget submission is acted on favorably by Congress a total of $8 Billion dollars will go out to state and local governments for homeland security. The enactment of tax reductions, however, will lower the caps for the appropriation committee chairs in Congress and affect the ceilings of each of the thirteen appropriation acts (one of which now will be solely for the Department of Homeland Security) for fiscal years 2005 which begins October 1st, 2004. The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, FY 2004, Public Law 108-90 became law on October 1, 2003.
Perhaps it is too soon to measure the true impact on local governments and their operations by the new department. All grant monies will continue to go first to the States, with some earmarked percentage for State purposes. The States will also continue to take indirect costs authorized by OMB Circular A-87 which may exceed 20% of total grant outlays. It is also of interest that there are restrictions on standard setting for technology in the new Department, so that voluntary consensus standard setting organizations such as NFPA and ANSI will be very important.
Despite promises, very little has been done administratively to ease the burden operationally or financially on State and local government’s preparedness and response operations. $20 billion dollars with relatively little in the way of earmarks will go out to State governments under the provisions of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, H.R. 2/P.L. 108-27 (May 28, 2003; 117Stat. 752; 17 pages). It will be interesting to see how this unexpected windfall on the fiscally burdened State governments will be distributed programmatically.
Nor has the audit of an actual large scale incident or event measured the improvement on homeland security preparedness, response and recovery since November 25th. Hurricane Isabel was only a category 2 storm so only time will tell!
Portions of this article were previously published in BEST PRACTICES In Emergency Services, Vol.6 No.8, August 2003
The Department of Homeland Security and Its Relationship to Local Government
On November 25, 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Public Law 107-296). The enactment came after a formal legislative process that ran at full speed after the President reversed course and announced on June 6, 2002 that he supported creation of the new Cabinet Department. A version of enacted bill was submitted by the Administration on June 18, 2002, and introduced on behalf of the Administration.
This time frame left little opportunity for lobbying by governmental entities, especially State and local governments. It did allow for a number of potential vendors, and interest groups to heavily and effectively lobby during this time frame. The President’s bill was drafted in intense secrecy by (1) Tom Ridge; (2) Andrew H. Card, the White House Chief of Staff; (3) Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House Counsel; (4) Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., the Director of OMB, and (5) Joshua B. Bolten, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (now the Director of OMB succeeding Mitch Daniels). All are lawyers. None except Tom Ridge had held elected state-wide office and none have backgrounds as first responders. The President’s bill was submitted to Congress on June 18th and introduced by request in the House of Representatives on June 26th as H.R. 5005 was referred to a Select Committee chaired by Richard Armey (R-Tex.) the Majority Leader of the House. It passed the House on July 26th, and after consideration by the Senate with amendments passed the Senate on November 19th. The House then voted approval of the Senate amendments and it was enrolled and sent to the President who signed it on November 25th.
The Act’s legislative history is short. Even prior to the events of September 11th, 2001, a series of Congressionally mandated Commissions (Bremer, Deutch, Hart-Rudman, and Gilmore) had recommended organizational restructuring of the Executive Branch to more effectively and efficiently prepare for and respond to terrorism and the potential the terrorists would employ weapons of mass destruction (WMD). These reports are available from me at vlg338@yahoo.com. I have recommended indirectly to Lee Hamilton that the Hart-Rudman Commission reassemble to produce a comprehensive status report on their recommendations as we approach a full decade since they last reported. It should also be specifically noted that a bill passed the House of Representatives (H.R. 4210 in July 2000, Second Session 106th Congress) that had been orchestrated by Representative Tilly Fowler (R-Florida). The Senate did not act on that bill. The original bill as introduced is available on this blog under FEMA Historical Materials and on the FAS web sites at http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dhs/fema/index/html
Five Under Secretary positions were created in the new statute with three of direct concern to local government. First, the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate composed primarily of the former Federal Emergency Management Agency. Secondly, the largest directorate by number of employees, the Border and Transportation Security Directorate which also include the former Office of National Preparedness from FEMA (this office had been established by administrative order to implement a Presidential initiative on May 8th, 2001, and is being returned to the Preparedness Division of the EP&R Directorate on July 13th , 2003 and its staff possibly dispersed).The Office of National Preparedness had administered the EMPG grants authorized under Title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Public Law 100-707) It also included the Office of Domestic Preparedness (headed by a Presidential appointee, Susan Mencer, a former FBI agent, from the Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, which had provided grants to State and local governments under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-132) and the so-called Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Act (Title XIV of the 1996 DoD Authorization Act (Public Law 104-201), or under authority of various Commerce, Justice, State Appropriation Acts. Some of this money had been passed through the United States Fire Administration, part of FEMA, which was authorized in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and authority of Presidential Directive 39. It should be noted that there is an inherent statutory conflict between the EP&R Directorates response authority for the federal establishment under Title V of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Office of Domestic Preparedness under Section 430 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It is of great interest that the responsibility for the development and implementation of the mandated National Response Plan (HSPD-5) was originally assigned to Admiral Loy (Ret.) and the Transportation Security Administration. Admiral Loy is now the Deputy Secretary for the Department. Now plan development and integration is located in a new Integration Center reporting to the Director.
A third component of the new department of interest was the Office of State and Local Government Coordination established by Section 801 of the Act. At the moment, this Office has no grant money but Secretary Ridge has testified (May 1st 2003) that all State and local grants should come through this office. As Ridge says “One-stop shopping.” Ridge notified Congress on January 21, 2004 that all state and local grants would be awarded by the Office of State and Local Coordination to be renamed the Office of State and Local Preparedness and Coordination.
It should be noted that there are in addition the three other directorates headed by Under Secretaries that are of less immediate concern to local governments and first responders. These are (1) the Under Secretary for Science and Technology; (2) the Under Secretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection; and (3) the Under Secretary for Management.
Monies for State and local government for the three years ending September 11, 2004, will have come in both annual appropriation acts and supplemental appropriation acts. Promised originally for State and local first responders shortly after September 11, 2001, was the amount of $3.5 Billion. It will only be possible to determine actually outlays after September 11, 2004, but it appears that that amount will only be reached, if at all, by including the bioterrorism preparedness monies authorized under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, Public Law 107-188; June 12, 2002). Perhaps it makes common sense to include these monies even though the public health system, not traditional first responders, has been the recipient.
Secretary Tom Ridge has stated in various speeches that if the President’s FY 04 budget submission is acted on favorably by Congress a total of $8 Billion dollars will go out to state and local governments for homeland security. The enactment of tax reductions, however, will lower the caps for the appropriation committee chairs in Congress and affect the ceilings of each of the thirteen appropriation acts (one of which now will be solely for the Department of Homeland Security) for fiscal years 2005 which begins October 1st, 2004. The Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, FY 2004, Public Law 108-90 became law on October 1, 2003.
Perhaps it is too soon to measure the true impact on local governments and their operations by the new department. All grant monies will continue to go first to the States, with some earmarked percentage for State purposes. The States will also continue to take indirect costs authorized by OMB Circular A-87 which may exceed 20% of total grant outlays. It is also of interest that there are restrictions on standard setting for technology in the new Department, so that voluntary consensus standard setting organizations such as NFPA and ANSI will be very important.
Despite promises, very little has been done administratively to ease the burden operationally or financially on State and local government’s preparedness and response operations. $20 billion dollars with relatively little in the way of earmarks will go out to State governments under the provisions of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, H.R. 2/P.L. 108-27 (May 28, 2003; 117Stat. 752; 17 pages). It will be interesting to see how this unexpected windfall on the fiscally burdened State governments will be distributed programmatically.
Nor has the audit of an actual large scale incident or event measured the improvement on homeland security preparedness, response and recovery since November 25th. Hurricane Isabel was only a category 2 storm so only time will tell!
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