FEMA, BROWN EARN SHARP EDITORIAL CRITICISM IN FLORIDA

The response --- or lack of it --- from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and it's director, Michael D. Brown, has resulted in sharp words from many fronts, and the editorial pages across Florida are no different.

Some excerpts:

South Florida Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale): Is it stubbornness or stupidity? Incompetence or insanity? What can explain the baffling decision by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deny Hurricane Katrina aid to residents of Broward and Miami-Dade counties?Maybe it's all of the above...

This year, although people in Broward and Miami-Dade suffered significant losses from Katrina, FEMA has closed its checkbook...Florida officials and members of Congress are rightfully demanding that FEMA reconsider.

Time magazine, meanwhile, is questioning Brown's credentials, citing discrepancies between his online legal profile and his official biography...None of this should surprise anyone, except maybe clueless President Bush, who said amid the Gulf Coast ruins, "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

On Friday, though, the Associated Press reported that Brown had been relieved of responsibility for managing Katrina relief efforts. That's good, but it's not enough. He should be fired.

Tampa Tribune: Brown, more experienced in horses than disasters, rode to the aid of hurricane victims at a trot rather than a gallop. The apparent leadership vacuum created its own political whirlwind.

Brown was a political appointee. His major task now that [Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad W.] Allen is cleaning up after him on the Gulf Coast can only be to find another job.

Lakeland Ledger (Friday): When Hurricane Dennis hit the Florida panhandle in July, Craig Fugate fumed over the slow response from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We're slowing the process down," Fugate, director of Florida's Division of Emergency Management, told reporters. "A large scale disaster will occur, and there will be another hue and cry about why we were not able to get the aid faster."

Fugate was right...Some blame the demotion of FEMA from an independent Cabinet-level emergency-response agency to an office of Homeland Security for the delays and misfires, and there is probably something to that...Still others point to several years of funding cuts to the agency, and this at a time when Florida and other coastal states were being hammered by hurricanes of increasing frequency and strength...But leadership and professionalism are also crucial elements, and in the wake of Katrina, it's clear that there has been both a leadership deficit and a dangerous lack of professionalism at FEMA.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that FEMA ended up under someone like Michael Brown...Brown is a political appointee who got the job because he was a buddy and former college roommate of a previous FEMA director, who was himself a former campaign manager for President Bush.

Message: Professionalism matters.