New Orleans Sanitation Director trashes FEMA in book
New Orleans Times-Picayune
Thu April 9, 2009
Area: New Orleans
As City Hall continues to haggle with the Federal Emergency Management Agency over hundreds of millions of dollars for New Orleans' recovery, a top aide to Mayor Ray Nagin has published a how-to guide littered with cutting assertions about FEMA's competence and its employees' motives.
The hits begin even before page 1 of "How to Maximize FEMA Funding After a Natural Disaster, " the 61-page paperback by Sanitation Director Veronica White that recently hit store shelves.
In the acknowledgments, White declares: "I want to thank all of the FEMA representatives; if it weren't for your incompetence, this book would not have come to pass."
Similar barbs appear throughout as White describes the trouble she and other unnamed city officials have encountered in providing paperwork to FEMA to secure money for restoring damaged public assets to their pre-Katrina condition. The Stafford Act requires federal taxpayers to foot the bill for such work.
"The word of a FEMA representative does not travel in time, " White writes. "A spoken promise is no more valuable than the air it fills. . . . FEMA representatives can be caught going back on their word."
In another section she alleges: "FEMA will find any and all reasons to deny funding and will always go back and state that certain projects are not reimbursable under the Stafford Act."
Perhaps at odds with her generally tough tone, White also offers: "It is also very important to establish a good relationship with FEMA representatives."
Lending his worldwide renown to White's tome is New Orleans Recovery Director Ed Blakely, who in a blurb calls the book "the most valuable tool" for cities facing natural disasters.
"FEMA is not the problem; you are, if you fail to buy this book, " the quote states.
Almost as noteworthy as its denunciation of FEMA is the slender volume's price tag: $35. Published by White's husband, David White, under the banner DEW Enterprises of Orleans, the cover price translates to a whopping 46 cents per page. Vendors include Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Since shortly after Katrina, White has mentioned her desire to write a book about dealing with a federal bureaucracy that has infuriated and befuddled state and local officials alike. Last year, the state Ethics Board ruled that because the project did not closely align with her City Hall duties, the ethics code would not bar her from publishing and earning money from such a book.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, her account includes few specific references to New Orleans. In describing the city's lengthy road to recovery, White notes that "many residents have to drive twenty or thirty miles just to get groceries, three years after Katrina hit town."
Beyond that, however, the text includes only one specific reference to the debris-removal and demolition efforts that White has overseen since the flood: a technical dispute over FEMA's payment of $3.4 million to cover a debris-removal contract. There are few of the in-the-weeds details that local officials say have most hamstrung rebuilding.
Instead, much of White's book, which is divided into pre- and post-disaster sections, reads like a basic how-to manual for municipal officials anywhere in the country who might find themselves enmeshed in a major recovery effort of any sort.
She offers lessons that have become common knowledge in southeast Louisiana: have a clear, comprehensive plan before disaster strikes; maximize insurance coverage of public assets; meticulously document disaster-related losses; include federal reimbursement language in recovery contracts; and make copies of paperwork likely to cross a FEMA official's desk.
A spokesman for Mayor Ray Nagin declined to answer questions Thursday about whether the administration is concerned that White's critiques could harm the city's attempts to secure recovery money, or could damage its relationship with FEMA, which officials on both sides say has improved since President Obama replaced top leaders.
City spokesman James Ross added that Nagin had not read the book.
Provided with excerpts, FEMA spokesman Andrew Thomas said: "FEMA has and will continue to partner with each city, every parish and the state to ensure each applicant receives every federal dollar they are eligible for."
Share your thoughts in the Forum
