Copyright 2005 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
By EMILY HAMLIN
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Bush administration must break FEMA away from the Department of Homeland Security if it wants the agency to be effective during the next disaster, said former FEMA Director James Lee Witt.
“Right now, it’s a shameful waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Witt, who shared his ideas for change during a forum Friday at the City Club of Cleveland.
Witt served under President Clinton as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, under President Bush, has been under fire since last summer for its poor response to Gulf Coast hurricane victims.
Witt joined Clinton’s Cabinet in 1996 and is credited with transforming FEMA from a bureaucratic mess into an effective organization.
But Witt said Friday that after his departure in 2001, he
watched all that work unravel.
The government moved some of FEMA’s workers and responsibilities under new leadership when it created Homeland Security in 2001.
Witt said he warned the Bush administration that bringing 22 departments and 180,000 workers under one Cabinet position wouldn’t work.
The result, he said, was exactly what he feared — the agency became a disconnected, bureaucratic nightmare, which led to disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“If you don’t plan together, train together and work together, you won’t respond together,” said Witt, whose private company is now overseeing Louisiana’s reconstruction.
To turn the agency around, the president must restore FEMA’s independence, put its director back in the Cabinet and give it the money it needs to handle emergencies correctly, Witt said.
“It just breaks my heart to see what’s happening,” he said. “This isn’t the way we treat people in America.”
Morton Smith of Beachwood has been following the Gulf Coast recovery effort and came to the City Club to hear Witt.
“He has some good ideas for fixing the problem,” Smith said. The government “would be wise to listen to him.”