Washington – Michael Brown’s resignation from the Federal Emergency Management Agency helps restore the public’s confidence and improves leadership as the Gulf Coast rebuilds, several Colorado lawmakers said Monday.
Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, Democratic Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette, and Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo had called on Bush to fire Brown, saying he lacked qualifications.
Udall on Monday called for legislation to ensure that future heads of FEMA would meet certain qualifications and not be hired as a political reward.
“Emergency-response management should be based on career expertise and not political connections,” Udall said.
Brown, said Tancredo, “was not a leader at a time when we desperately needed someone in that position to lead the agency. As the Gulf Coast is rebuilt, he said, “there’s tons of works to do, hundreds of probably billions of dollars to spend, and you’re going to need somebody in that position who commands respect, which unfortunately Mr. Brown does not.”
FEMA, with Brown at the helm, failed at both preparing for the disaster and responding to it, Salazar said.
“We need to improve FEMA,” he said. “It will create an opportunity for the president to place somebody in the directorship of FEMA that has the kind of experience to respond to catastrophes like Katrina.”
Udall and DeGette have called for FEMA to be an independent agency once again. It has been part of the Department of Homeland Security since 2003.
“Hurricane Katrina exposed serious problems with FEMA’s ability to adequately respond to a disaster,” DeGette said.
