Chicago – As hurricane relief efforts continue along the Gulf Coast, government investigators and auditors are intensifying their examination of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the office in charge of responding to natural disasters.
Separate congressional and White House investigations have been launched into FEMA’s roundly criticized response to Hurricane Katrina, and government auditors are questioning several multi million-dollar Katrina contracts, including one to a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the multinational company formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.
This week, a federal judge in Florida will hear arguments in a lawsuit aimed at forcing FEMA to release details of $1 billion in disaster-relief payments in the wake of Hurricane Frances, which struck Florida in 2004. Published reports have revealed examples of millions of dollars going to areas that suffered little, if any, damage.
While a federal audit criticized FEMA for not adequately documenting the need for assistance – including paying for the funerals of people who may not have died as a result of Frances – FEMA attorneys argue that privacy interests outweigh the public’s need to know how that money was distributed.
The multiple investigations of FEMA come as the agency, which has had a checkered performance history since its creation in April 1979, struggles to respond to disasters in often rapid succession, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Although the congressional and White House probes have been condemned by Democrats as a partisan whitewash operation, the proliferation of questions about FEMA promotes the perception of an agency that is being battered by a disaster of its own making.
Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association, a nonprofit agency that represents state emergency management officials, said FEMA is effectively under siege “at a time when they are still in response mode.”
“A forward view of the response from the local, state and federal level is appropriate and necessary,” Sheets said. “It just needs to wait until these catastrophic disasters are behind us.”
Past performances by FEMA also have fueled doubts about the agency’s competence. Recent stories by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that FEMA awarded at least $330 million in disaster relief to areas that suffered little or no damage during natural disasters from 1999 through 2004.
An audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General examined the agency’s approval of $1.1 billion in disaster funding stemming from Hurricane Frances and found that, in one instance, $720,000 in payments were awarded to 228 people based solely on “verbal representations” that they had suffered losses.
