Function and form in emergency management
HLSWatch was founded as a non-partisan source and forum. The current stable of posters has endeavored to maintain this tradition, perhaps this rigor…
Still, I hope regular readers know I am a self-declared conservative with libertarian tendencies and a life-long Republican who nonetheless actively worked for candidate Obama in 2008. I have previously exposed this background to allow you to filter my worldview. I want you to understand my predispositions and challenge my analysis when you perceive my bias is getting in the way of accurately engaging reality.
It can be difficult to recognize reality. It is important to try our best and depend on the help of our friends (and others) to do better.
Below is yesterday’s much discussed New York Times’ lead editorial. I am obliged to enter it into the Homeland Security Watch archives. The analysis is timely, accurate in its details, and — it seems to me — could contribute to confusion regarding distinctions of form and function.
It is my judgment that the Obama campaign, Obama administration, current FEMA leadership, extant statutes, long-time tradition, and practical priorities of strategy, operations, and tactics all defer to state and local leadership of emergency management: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery. On this functional foundation there is no substantive difference. (Prevention is a complicated matter that would require much more time and attention to accurately analyze.)
Form matters. How functions are defined, organized and directed will have consequences. Substantive differences exist between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, between Democrats and Republicans, and between various corners of the EM community on many important issues of form. (See RecoveryDiva for a good aggregation of recent attention to these formal distinctions.) But I perceive in this instance the NYT editorial board is using a formal strawman to argue a functional difference that does not exist.
(The embedded links in the NYT editorial below were in the original online version.)
THE NEW YORK TIMES: OCTOBER 30, 2012 EDITORIAL
A Big Storm Requires Big Government
Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.
Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.
Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.
