EDITORIAL - The Federal Emergency Management Agency's wasteful spending and poor decision-making during the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort is still getting noticed years after the event, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorializes on the matter.

Forgive us. We were so consumed with rage while researching last week's editorial on the toxic trailers the Federal Emergency (Mis)Management Agency is still twiddling its two left thumbs over that we almost overlooked news that the agency flushed away about $30 million "in wasteful and improper or potentially fraudulent payments."

We're quoting the Government Accountability Office's November report on Hurricane Katrina. While FEMA is being praised for its work in the California wild fires, the report found flaw after flaw in the agency's decision-making (we use that term loosely, as it implies research, thought and a logical procedure of sorts) in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane. Among the worst problems is one involving the agency's placement of trailers at private sites versus underused group sites:

"FEMA will spend on average about $30,000 on each 280-square-foot trailer at a private site through March 2009... . In contrast, expenses for just one trailer at the Port of Bienville Park case study site could escalate to about $229,000 -- the same as the cost of a five-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home in Jackson, Mississippi."

FEMA's response, included in the report, states that trailer placements were executed in order to locate families close to "their pre-disaster community." Hmm. What about the $15 million spent on maintenance inspections that never happened, or the $600,000 spent on repairs for housing that doesn't even exist in the agency's inventory?

If this is how the agency operates knowing that the GAO is watching, we can only imagine how it would operate without oversight.

(SOURCE)

It would seem that the Government Accountability Office simply is not enough any more. Perhaps a Government Enforcement Office needs to take a more active role in not only illuminating the waste that exists in our government, but correcting it with sound policy – which, coincidently, nearly always involves removing the responsibility from the federal government altogether.