I feel like the expectant father, pacing outside the delivery room, waiting for the FEMA Regional Administrators to be delivered. While there are some in place, I have yet to hear about FEMA Region X. So, wazzup? Almost a year into the new Obama administration and some key (at least in my mind) people have not been appointed. How many undocumented aliens can be cleaning houses or being nannies these days? Is it really that hard, or is it just not important at the upper echelons of leadership?
What prompted me to even think about the above was an email from Bill Cumming and his piece that follows. In my mind a lack of DHS regions is a true hindrance to coordination among the various federal agencies that make up DHS and with the other federal departments also in their regions.
Maybe the fact that we have "survived" for most of a year without federally appointed FEMA Administrators is a testament to their not being needed?
I had hoped for better from the new administration.
FEMA: Clear as Mud?
By William R. Cumming
Coming into DHS FEMA was the only predecessor organizations with the usual 10 federal region structure. The fact that these positions were technically abolished by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 as well as all Presidentially appointed positions in FEMA, seems not to have been a factor in any thinking post March 1, 2003, when FEMA itself was technically abolished, not to be reconstituted legally until March 31, 2007. This might have been considered a strength and since traditionally the FEMA regions were led by a political appointee--a non-career SES-- appointed by the President but not requiring Senate confirmation--you might think that this was a logical point to organize a field structure, and in particular for crisis management. Each DHS Secretary so far--all lawyers-- have dodged the statutory mandate for developing a field organization for the entirety of DHS. This is still an unfinished task. So we do know that the FEMA Regional Directors have no command and control over other DHS field units. Probably as it should be. Okay perhaps that is a "Wicked Problem" as the Public Administration types sometimes label.
But because the formal delegations to FEMA REGIONAL Administrators are so poorly drafted, so lacking in specificity, and give so little real authority and accountability to these positions and their organizations it is completely unknown what they can or should do or be accountable for in the system.
Moreover, the rationalization and delegations to the FCO's is also unclear and certainly unclear as to whether the FEMA Regional Administrators might have some formal relationship with them or be in any way in a support role or otherwise. In other words, even where FEMA could have clear lines of authority and chain of command for crisis management or other purposes it has chosen to allow the system to remain murky and cloudy.
Good luck Administrator Fugate. Much of this is your decision to make although I am sure all those Presidentially appointed political management types in DHS will have something to add or subtract from your decisions.
