Union Calls for Removal of FEMA from DHS

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/7097/128/
Standalone agency would receive attention to fix problems, AFGE says The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) remains a failed agency that would become more effective if it were removed from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a list of recommendations from the president of a union chapter of FEMA employees."In the three years since Hurricane Katrina, FEMA's public relations efforts have pushed the story that the agency has learned from its mistakes, telling the public that the agency has been improving coordination, adding leadership, and recruiting talent to successfully support numerous disasters since those fateful days in the late summer of 2005," wrote Leo Bosner, president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 4060, which represents 400 FEMA employees in Washington, DC."The harsh truth is that the disasters FEMA has supported in recent years are basically mid-level disasters, and not large-scale catastrophes on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the 9/11 attacks. These more recent mid-scale disasters caused swaths of devastation, but did not for the most part destroy local and State governments' ability to coordinate and manage their own responses to affected areas. Should a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina strike today, we do not believe FEMA is ready," concluded Bosner, who is an emergency management specialist at FEMA.As such, Bosner's list of recommendations, circulated to government officials and reporters Tuesday, calls for the restoration of FEMA as a standalone agency under the rationale that it would receive more individual attention to correct its management and operational shortfalls.