The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Disaster-relief positions are empty amid storm
FEMA, HUD, EPA are all missing key people in top posts.
The Trump administration has left vacancies in key emergency-response posts, and that may hamper efforts after Hurricane Harvey’s record rainfall and the impending Hurricane Irma.
Deputies are missing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which spearheads relief in the early days after disasters, and at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which helps get storm victims back into lodgings. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have a regional director in Texas whose duties would include responding to Harvey’s inundation of polluted Superfund sites.
President Donald Trump is behind the appointments pace of the Obama and Bush White Houses. He has said he doesn’t intend to fill “unnecessary” positions, and he has proposed cutting the EPA’s budget by almost a third, HUD’s by 13 percent and FEMA’s by 11 percent.
Public relations offices at EPA and FEMA headquarters didn’t immediately respond to emailed queries.
Trump said in a tweet Thursday, “Hurricane Irma is raging but we have great teams of talented and brave people already in place and ready to help.”
At the housing department, led by Secretary Ben Carson, nine of 12 top positions are empty, according to a tally kept by the Partnership for Public Service and the Washington Post. Two nominees await Senate confirmation including Pamela Hughes Patenaude as deputy secretary responsible for day-to-day operations.
The White House hasn’t named nominees for six of the posts.
Carson’s department wins praise from some. Marion McFadden, who in 15 years with HUD helped lead disaster responses, said, “HUD already has good, capable, competent, experienced leadership in place to run a successful recovery program.”
She cited Neal Rackleff, a former housing director for
the city of Houston, who is a deputy at HUD with responsibility for disaster recovery.
“We have every indication he’s well placed to take on this responsibility” after working effectively for the city including guiding flood relief, said McFadden, who is vice president with Enterprise Community Partners Inc., a nonprofit group based in Columbia, Md., that works on affordable housing.
Carson said in an interview broadcast Wednesday by National Public Radio, “There’s no question that it’s harmful that we don’t have our complete complement of people,” and faulted the Senate for not confirming the two high-level picks. “Fortunately, we have many people who have stepped up to the plate and we’re working very hard to keep things moving in a positive direction.”
At FEMA, led by administrator Brock Long since June, two top aides await Senate confirmation, including one whose position was created in reaction to shortcomings in the response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, according to the Partnership for Public Service.
The EPA’s response to Harvey will be hampered with few political appointees in key posts, said Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who led the agency under former President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.
Vacancies include the heads of almost all 10 regional
offices. An administrator just took over at Atlanta-based Region 4, but Dallas-based Region 6, for Texas, Louisiana and three other Southern states, does not have a Trump-approved leader.
“It makes it difficult, because what you’ve got is a lot of career people in the regions without a leader who are worried every day about their job anyway,” Whitman said.
“They are afraid if they put a foot wrong they’ve signed their exit from the agency.”
Hundreds of EPA workers are leaving voluntarily as Administrator Scott Pruitt works toward cutting staff by one-fifth. John O’Grady, head of the employees’ union at the agency, said, “The question is, long term, how well can the agency deal with this?”
The EPA has 143 people addressing health and environmental concerns after Hurricane Harvey, said David Gray, a Dallas-based agency spokesman.
The federal response could benefit from one overall leader that works across agencies, said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, a policy group in Washington.
“We need one person who wakes up every day and thinks about: How can the federal government be a steady partner to the Texas community — and even Florida if that becomes the case,” Liu said.