'the White House is exploring legal options for the president to seize control from a governor when disaster strikes. '

Plan would let

president take

control in disasters

Saturday, October 22, 2005
Bill Walsh
Link Here

WASHINGTON -- In what could be read as a slap at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the White House is exploring legal options for the president to seize control from a governor when disaster strikes. Federal law puts a state's chief executive at the helm in a disaster, with the president serving in a supporting role. But Frances Townsend, the former prosecutor President Bush appointed to examine failures in the response to Hurricane Katrina, said Friday that she is considering whether there is "a narrow band of cases" in which the president should take over. "We are very focused on it," Townsend said. "We owe the president some options." Katrina, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, brought to the fore a question of authority that had mainly been the subject of academic debates. As flood victims pleaded for help in New Orleans, state and federal authorities argued over who should be in charge. Four days after the Aug. 29 storm swamped New Orleans and isolated the city, the White House sent Blanco an urgent request to allow Bush to take control of the National Guard troops under her command. The following morning, Sept. 3, Blanco refused. She later said she saw the request as an attempt to undermine her authority. Friday at a White House briefing, Townsend sought to assure reporters that the president wasn't seeking to overturn a tradition of state-federal relations dating back to the formation of the republic. But she provided few details about what situations might merit a federal incursion. "The federal government is never going to be the nation's first responder," Townsend said. "It can't be and shouldn't be. To the extent people are worried about overturning years of tradition, that's not what we're talking about." Still, the tensions between Blanco and Bush in the aftermath of Katrina were alarming enough to the nation's governors that they issued a unified statement Oct. 13 asserting their authority. "Governors are responsible for the safety and welfare of their citizens and are in the best position to coordinate all resources to prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters," the National Governors Association said. In an opinion piece, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush wrote in the Washington Post, "Just as all politics are local, so are disasters." A spokeswoman for Blanco on Friday said she couldn't think of an instance in which the president should be able to unilaterally take control of a disaster in Louisiana. "We didn't believe Katrina was the time, and I don't know what another time would be," Denise Bottcher said. Townsend, who most recently served as Bush's top adviser on domestic terrorism, was assigned a month ago to investigate the governmental failures that contributed to the problems of the Katrina aftermath. She has assembled a 12-member task force including staffers from the Department of Defense, Department of Justice, FBI and Homeland Security. Still in the fact-gathering stage, she declined to describe any specific findings beyond what she said was a general breakdown in communications. Two congressional committees are also investigating the hurricane response and have held hearings highlighting the bureaucratic obstacles to quick and efficient action by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some lawmakers, including Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, have called for FEMA to be removed from the Department of Homeland Security to "cut through the bureaucratic red tape," as he put it after a hearing Wednesday. Townsend suggested that she opposed making FEMA a separate agency. She said there were "very good reasons" to keep FEMA ensconced in the larger bureaucracy. "If there is something that causes us to question that, we'll question it," she said. "I haven't seen that yet." Townsend said she planned to be in Louisiana and Alabama next week. She plans to issue a report by December or January. . . . . . . .

Bill Walsh can be reached at bill.walsh@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7817.