Time to clean up Dodge

More damning Katrina testimony is described on Boston.com by Hope Yen (AP). At Thursday's Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, FEMA official Marty Bahamonde testified that Michael Brown and other FEMA officials ignored his emailed pleas for help and seemed more concerned about Brown's dinner plans in Baton Rouge. Yen reports that Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, "decried the 'complete disconnect between senior officials and the reality of the situation."

Many will find Bahamonde's testimony shocking. Sadly, out-of-touch management is common at agencies throughout federal government. Worse, many federal workers complain that their agencies are run like fiefdoms or lawless frontier towns. With no appreciable whistleblower protections, would-be reformers and do-gooders end up face down in the dust. Unhappily, the wild west is alive - not in some Rocky Mountain vale, but in the nation's capital. where federal agencies serve as a Hole-in-the-Wall refuge for bad actors and ne'er-do-wells.

Post-Katrina political fireworks are shining rare light on the real federal government - a bureaucratic badlands, badly needing reform. But, where is the Wyatt Earp willing and able to clean it up?

FEMA official says boss ignored warnings
Hope Yen, AP, on Boston.com

October 20, 2005