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Subject: Overhaul Plans Proceed At FEMA, Agriculture; White House Opposes Disaster
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 04:44:31 EST
Message-ID: <46.1992Nov19.044432@AmeriCast.com>

Overhaul Plans Proceed At FEMA, Agriculture; White House Opposes
Disaster Agency Changes<By Bill McAllister=Washington Post Staff
Writer=

The director of the troubled Federal Emergency Management Agency
this week announced plans for a major reorganization of the agen-
cy despite White House instructions to avoid significant policy
initiatives until President-elect Clinton takes office.

Congressional and Bush administration sources said yesterday that
they doubt FEMA Director Wallace E. Stickney, a political protege
of former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, will be al-
lowed to implement the proposal next Wednesday as he has planned.
"It seems to be inconsistent with what the president has said,"
one Senate official familiar with the proposal said.

Separately, Agriculture Department officials said they were
proceeding with their agency's previously announced plans for a
major realignment of field offices. Spokesman Roger D. Runnigen
said the plan, which follows state recommendations for closing
hundreds of local offices, should be announced by Secretary Ed-
ward R. Madigan before the Bush administration leaves office.
Runnigen said Congress was aware of both the proposal and the
administration's timetable for implementing the changes at Agri-
culture. A joint Office of Management and Budget-Agriculture
"swat team" has been studying the closings since this spring
despite calls by some members of Congress for swifter reorganiza-
tion.

A FEMA spokesman yesterday defended the FEMA plan, which Stickney
sent Monday to the White House, Congress and FEMA's labor unions,
describing the reorganization as "just part of normal opera-
tions." It calls for merging the agency's secretive, 887-member
"national preparedness directorate," which prepares the
government's plans for coping with a nuclear war, with its state
and local directorates, which are responsible for disaster relief
programs.

Richard S. Buck, acting executive vice president of Local 4060 of
the American Federation of Government Employees, accused Stickney
of "going off half-cocked" and  reorganizing the agency before
the General Accounting Office and the National Academy of Public
Administration complete their recommendations on how the agency
should be realigned.

The Senate official, who asked not to be named, said the proposed
reorganization also appears to conflict with congressional direc-
tives on how FEMA should be restructured. He said the Clinton
transition staff had not been informed of Stickney's proposal.

Both House and Senate Appropriations committees issued harshly
critical reports on FEMA's operations last summer, calling for
major changes in both its civil defense and disaster aid pro-
grams. A House subcommittee said the agency "is widely viewed as
a political 'dumping ground,' a turkey farm . . . where large
numbers of positions exist that can be conveniently and quietly
filled by political appointment."

In his letters, Stickney described his proposed changes as offer-
ing "a significant upgrading of the agency's present capabilities
for rapidly responding to catastrophic disasters." He said change
"also reflects the reality that the national security universe
has changed dramatically over the last year as a result of the
conclusion of the Cold War."

Stickney's letter was made public by union officials who said
that a large number of FEMA's 2,500 workers might be affected,
although it was not clear how many.  The entire Office of Mobili-
zation Preparedness, an unspecified portion of the Office of Sys-
tems Engineering, half the agency's regional planning staffs, and
part of the Office of Operations were listed by Stickney as
changing to the state and local programs staff.

Carl Suchocki, a FEMA spokesman, sought to minimize the impact of
the plan, saying that most of the affected workers would remain
at their current locations, changing only the directorate to
which they report. Many of the national preparedness workers have
been assisting in disaster programs, he said.<02:35 11-19C9999--
---

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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