FEMA's "Toxic Bureaucracy"

[UpInArms]

Source: CBS

(CBS) FEMA's been under fire from critics who claim the Gulf Coast recovery is moving too slowly. Now FEMA officials said they're investigating allegations of serious misconduct at the New Orleans office. CBS News has learned workers there accuse their bosses of intentionally holding up Katrina aid.

The day Hurricane Katrina hit Slidell, La., in 2005, more than six feet of tidal surge flooded the city's downtown. Today Slidell mayor Ben Morris is still running city hall - out of a trailer.

“When the train goes by, it shakes,” Morris said.

All because of endless delays, caused by FEMA, he says, which just last month delayed money for rebuilding yet again, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports exclusively.

“It's been an indescribable nightmare that most people would not believe,” Morris explained.

Today, nearly $4 billion intended to rebuild the Gulf Coast remain unspent. That's 68 percent of the $6 billion promised by FEMA.

This is leaving hundreds of projects, like a police station in New Orleans, and the Charity Hospital, waiting.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/25/cbsnews_investigates/main4828884.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline

[MadMaddie]

1. Wonder who is running the FEMA office in LA?

[Wizard777]

2. Who has Obama picked to run FEMA in DC? We need to stop the torture in Gitmo and NOLA.

The FEMA torture very well may be more insidious than water boarding.

[struggle4progress]

13. The Region IX office in Oakland: Karen E. Armes is Deputy Regional Administrator; she's

been there since December 2000

http://www.fema.gov/about/regions/regionix/index.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/karmes.shtm

[MadMaddie]

14. Time for her to go....

If there is a bottleneck of money not getting used it's on her. Bye...Bye...

[benld74]

3. I'll BET the Govenor of this state will get things done, Oh Bobbie!!!!

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. Imagine what the Billions spent on WARS coulda done for USA citizens AT HOME????

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silly me,

right?

[bertman]

5. Shhhhh. You might derail the gravy train, Canuk.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. No worries mate . . the PNAC gang will keep working their evil behind the curtains

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BUT

I'll whine loud and global whenever I get the opportunity

for what it's worth :shrug:

[bertman]

7. Good on you, CC

[Psephos]

9. That no longer matters...whatever we now want, we just put on the national credit ca

That last spending bill alone outspent the seven years in Iraq. Next bill's coming up, looks like four hundred billion freshly-printed dollars...more after that. Deficit will be over two trillion this year. So seriously, who cares anymore? Just spend, spend, spend. What's the effin' difference?

[Robbien]

8. New USAToday article just out "FEMA grilled on $4 billion in unspent aid"

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers blasted the heads of the government's Gulf Coast recovery effort Wednesday for delays that have stalled key projects and left billions of dollars in federal aid unspent.

"I'm frankly outraged to hear that there is this much money piled up," said District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, head of a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee.

USA TODAY reported this month that more than $3.9 billion of rebuilding aid still has not been spent, leaving thousands of projects across the Gulf Coast incomplete more than three years after the region was devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The aid, part of a massive recovery effort funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was meant to repair or replace public works destroyed by the storms.

Norton and other members of the subcommittee peppered officials with questions about how to speed rebuilding and resolve disputes between federal, state and local leaders that have snarled that work.

. . .

FEMA officials conceded they have faced problems, but defended their approach. Many of the delays are the result of "honest disagreements about what is and what is not eligible" for disaster aid, acting Deputy FEMA Administrator David Garratt said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-02-25-fema_N.htm

[Festivito]

10. Imagine that this backloads the next president with "higher" spending.

The actual need rises as time passes, so, the Obama admin must pay the higher costs, and, it follows, must incur the higher expenditures for history's review of spending.

[No Elephants]

11. An even bigger issue: Repairing/rebuilding the levees to withstand a level 6 or 7 hurricane. Until

that happens, we are just begging for another disaster to undo whatever has been done in NOLA to date, however much or little that may be.

[struggle4progress]

12. The "Department of Homeland Security" is probably part of the problem: Obama really ought to

dismantle that sucker