Uncommon Sense

Senate Panel Urge FEMA Dismantling
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, April 26 —The Federal Emergency Management Agency was so fundamentally dysfunctional during Hurricane Katrina that Congress should abolish it and create a new disaster response agency from scratch, according to a draft of bipartisan recommendations proposed by a Senate committee.

The new agency, which would still be part of the Department of Homeland Security, should be more powerful, with additional components that would give it a budget twice as big as FEMA's, the report's draft recommendations say.

It would assume functions spread throughout the department, like preparing for disasters or terrorist attacks, protecting the nation's infrastructure and distributing grants to state and local governments.

And during major catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina, the agency's director would report directly to the president.

FEMA today has a budget of $4.8 billion, and 2,600 full-time employees.

Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the new agency would be "better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a disaster."

The committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, also endorsed creation of what would be called the National Preparedness and Response Authority. But the full committee has not yet debated or voted on the draft recommendations.

The report has also not yet been shared with the Bush administration. But officials at the Department of Homeland Security said that from what they had already heard, they were not impressed.

"It is time to stop rearranging organization charts and start focusing on how governments at all levels are preparing for the fast-approaching storm season," said Russ Knocke, the department press secretary.

Since Hurricane Katrina hit, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, has been working on his own alternative to the agency's current structure, which he has described as "retooling" FEMA. That has meant bringing in professional disaster managers to replace the former director Michael D. Brown and other senior officials, many of whom had little emergency management experience.

Mr. Chertoff has also moved to fill hundreds of other vacant jobs, establish a better disaster-resistant communications system and set up a way to ensure that the agency can more rapidly deliver emergency supplies.

The proposal by the Senate committee leaders will join others now before Congress. Bills are pending that would keep FEMA intact, but remove it from the Homeland Security Department and have the director report directly to the president, as was the case before the department was created after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Um, it worked passable well before it was folded into DHS, so why not just undo that rather than try to reinvent the wheel less than five weeks before the start of hurricane season? Do people get common-sense-ectomies when they are elected to Congress?