Copyright 2006 The News and Observer
By LISA HOPPENJANS
The News & Observer (North Carolina)
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director James Lee Witt said Wednesday that the biggest lesson the federal government must take from Hurricane Katrina is that FEMA should be restored to its former status as a Cabinet-level independent agency.
“Basically, FEMA’s been cut and underfunded and put under the Department of Homeland Security, which minimizes the effectiveness of FEMA,” said Witt, who led the agency from 1993 to 2001. “It needs to be fixed.”
Witt, in town to speak at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce’s annual meeting, said FEMA has withered under the bureaucracy of Homeland Security and has lost its ability to respond quickly to disasters.
“I didn’t have to go through a chain of command, except the president,” he said.
After Witt, 62, left FEMA, he founded James Lee Witt Associates, a crisis and emergency management consulting firm. His firm has been helping Louisiana with recovery efforts, and he last visited the state just before Christmas. He said it was the most devastating disaster he had seen. In one parish, he said, all that remains is the courthouse.
With local governments in financial straits, Witt said, the federal government must step up its assistance.
He called for revisions to the Stafford Act, which restricts how federal disaster money can be spent. For example, Witt said, federal money can be used only to pay local police and firefighters overtime, not their regular salaries. But many local governments, with their tax bases destroyed, have little means to pay their employees.
"[The] tax base for every single parish that has been affected is gone,” he said.
Witt said the biggest immediate challenge is to provide enough temporary housing. Without it, he said, Louisiana can’t bring back its residents, attract the workers needed for rebuilding or lure back business owners to reopen. FEMA isn’t working fast enough or closely enough with local governments to meet demand, he said.
“It’s important to get built back better, safer, faster, to get the economy going,” he said.
Witt didn’t specifically mention former FEMA Director Michael Brown, a former official with the International Arabian Horse Association who was blamed for FEMA’s response to Katrina. But he did single out what he said was one major difference during his own years at FEMA.
“We put in place people with backgrounds in emergency management,” he said.
James Lee Witt was FEMA’s head from 1993 to 2001.