A lot of people have talked about holding big bosses accountable for the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.
Ken Salazar put it in writing.
On Tuesday, the Colorado senator sent a letter to the president seeking the resignation of Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael “Brownie” Brown.
On Thursday, Salazar renewed that call in a Senate floor speech. The first-term Democrat repeated his request that the president replace Brown “with a leader that has the experience and expertise to meet the challenges of the greatest natural disaster in our country’s history.”
Salazar’s letter cited one of many examples that show why Brown gets no Brownie points.
“Mr. Brown represented to the public that he could not have imagined the levees being breached in New Orleans,” Salazar wrote, “even though he had been briefed by federal government experts nearly a day and a half before Hurricane Katrina made landfall that those levees could indeed be breached.”
Salazar hasn’t heard back from the White House. He may never hear.
George W. Bush thinks “Brownie is doing a heck of a job.”
Brownie seems to be performing about as well as he did in his post as a commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association in Aurora.
A horse association board member accused Brown of improperly accepting a $50,000 donation to use against personal legal challenges in the cutthroat world of judging horseflesh. Brown was either asked to resign or left on his own with an agreement that wasn’t an “admission by either party of acts of wrongdoing.”
At this point, the public would probably accept a no-contest plea to be rid of Brown. He blamed the hurricane body count on people who didn’t evacuate, even as his agency failed to deliver relief that could have saved their lives.
If Brown survives this scandal, forget about government accountability. FEMA’s ineptitude killed people. If that’s not a firing offense, nothing is.
The country needs an independent, bipartisan commission with subpoena power to question Brown and other leaders under oath, while memories are fresh. Those in charge don’t deserve time to coordinate stories that cover their rear ends. Thousands of people forced to relieve themselves in public didn’t get to cover theirs.
There is no question about Michael Brown’s technical qualifications to head a national agency specializing in emergency management: He has none.
Brown did serve as the emergency-services manager for Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978. But he had done no disaster planning or management for more than 20 years when he got hired as FEMA’s general counsel in 2001. What he had was a close relationship with Bush’s 2000 campaign manager.
On Thursday, a White House spokesman refused to comment on Brown’s qualifications to work at FEMA. But in January 2003, someone decided he was capable enough to run the entire agency.
By then, FEMA had been gutted of power because it had moved from Cabinet status to a branch of Homeland Security. That was even more reason to have a guy with technical experience and expertise in charge. By emergency-management standards, Brownie shouldn’t have made the first cut. He proved why when he waited for hours after Katrina hit before asking that 1,000 Homeland Security personnel be sent to the Gulf Coast.
In his Senate speech Thursday, Salazar talked about the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II.
Katrina’s destruction and its aftermath “will require a recovery and reconstruction effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan,” Salazar said.
In addition to supplies, money and manpower, Salazar correctly observed that rebuilding the Gulf Coast must be led by people like Gen. George C. Marshall, people with charisma and competence.
An embattled ex-horse-association commissioner who owes his public post to political spoils will never be among them.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
