No More Brownies

No more Brownies
Wednesday, October 11, 2006


CONGRESS' ATTEMPT to avert the calamity of another Michael "Heck of a job, Brownie" Brown running the Federal Emergency Management Agency was dismissed last week as an incursion on President Bush's power. It's time for Congress to push back.

Using the controversial "signing statement," a legally dubious maneuver that allows the president to ignore or reinterpret laws written by Congress, the president signed the legislation into law but reserved the right to bypass the new mandate that the FEMA director have experience handling disaster responses.

It is apparently more important for the president to be able to pick his advisers than it is for the government to have assurances that the person in charge of responding to emergencies has the know-how to do the job. A job description seems like a minimal requirement when human lives and the future of whole communities are at stake.

At the very least, the move is a tone-deaf response to the toll exacted by Hurricane Katrina when FEMA Director Michael Brown, who, it was revealed later, had no emergency response plan in place to aid Gulf Coast residents. Brown, a horse judge, had no disaster-relief management experience before Bush appointed him to lead FEMA.

At its worst, it reveals that, in this administration's calculus, responsible governance plays second fiddle to the wielding of raw power.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/10/11/EDG6PKDVAK1.DTL