Response papers

Challenges to Federalism: Homeland Security and Disaster Response Author(s): Carmine Scavo, Richard C. Kearney, Richard J. Kilroy and Jr. Source: Publius, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 81-110 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4624811 Accessed: 25-11-2022 17:23 UTC

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Challenges to Federalism: Homeland Security and Disaster Response

Carmine Scavo*, Richard C. Kearneyt and Richard J. Kilroy, Jr.*

This article examines the state of federalism in the Bush Administration from the perspective of

the policy area of homeland security and disaster response. The article uses the International City

and County Management Association homeland security survey completed in the spring and

summer of 2005 as a source of data. The article argues that while it is tempting to look for one

single agency to control homeland security and disaster response, a networked model is better

supported by the survey data and by recent experience in terrorist and natural disaster response.

The time period from 2001 to 2005 is bracketed by two major focusing events-the

terrorist acts of September 11 and the two hurricanes hitting the Gulf Coast in

Fall 2005. Both directed the attention of the public and policymakers to underlying

issues concerning the events such as the lack of coordination in intelligence, the division between domestic and international reactions to such crises, and inade-

quacies in evacuation plans. But these two specific events directed attention in virtually diametric opposite poles of an emergency management-homeland security

continuum. Whereas 9/11 focused attention on the problems of international terrorism and moved the federal government into new policy areas, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrenched that attention back to more traditional areas of

emergency management, response, and recovery. Beyond even this, however, the two events focused attention on the intergovernmental nature of policy and the

distribution of power in the U.S. federal system-9/11 resulting in power flowing

to the federal level and the Gulf Coast hurricanes reintroducing questions about the

over-centralization of U.S. emergency and disaster policy, and the potential problem of one enunciated homeland security agenda.

Both events caused policy change-9/11 resulted in creation of the Department of

Homeland Security (DHS), passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, and development of the

National Response Plan (NRP). A year after the Gulf Coast hurricanes, Congress was considering changes to the mission of Federal Emergency Management

*Department of Political Science, East Carolina University. Email: [email protected]

tSchool of Public and International Affairs, North Carolina State University, Email: [email protected]

tDepartment of International Studies and Political Science, Virginia Military Institute. Email: [email protected]

Publius: TheJournal of Federalism volume 38 number 1, pp. 81-110

doi: 10.1093/publius/pjm029

Advance Access publication 29 September 2007

? The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc.

All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected].

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82 C. Scavo et al.

Agency (FEMA), elevation of FEMA to a Cabinet-level department, and even elimination of FEMA and absorption of its duties into other agencies within DHS, and,

perhaps, the Department of Defense (DoD) (Wise and Nader 2006)1.

It is our contention that the focusing event of 9/11 resulted in a great effort to

centralize decision-making in emergency and disaster policy, that this centralization

of decision-making was only partially underway by the time the 2005 hurricanes hit

the Gulf Coast, and that the confusion resulting from the changeover was partially

to blame for the ongoing poor response on the part of all levels of government to those hurricanes. It is also our contention that this centralization of decision-

making was and is largely unnecessary and wrong-headed and that, in particular,

the proposed designation of the U.S. military as the lead agency in disaster and emergency response has the probability of both adversely affecting the capacity of

state and local government to undertake emergency and disaster response and the

morale and capacity of the military to fulfill its war-fighting mission. As we note

later, the sole exception to this contention is the role of the U.S. Coast Guard which performed its multiple missions very well in the 2005 hurricanes. However,

there are characteristics unique to the Coast Guard that help explain its exceptional nature, but even here the lessons of what the Coast Guard can and did do risk

being over-generalized and misapplied to other venues, a legacy of the symbolic nature of large-scale focusing events.

In utilizing the concept of focusing events to examine challenges to federalism, we are working in the broad traditions of Kingdon (1995) and Birkland (1997). We adopt Birkland's view of a focusing event:

an event that is sudden, relatively rare, can be reasonably defined as harmful

or revealing the possibility of potentially greater future harms, inflicts harms

or suggests potential harms that are or could be concentrated on a definable

geographical area or community of interest, and that is known to policy makers and the public virtually simultaneously (Birkland 1997, 22).

Birkland's definition draws attention to both the probability of an event and its

outcomes-risk assessment in its basic form. High probability events are often the

focus of local emergency planners (Waugh 2004) whereas DHS has tended to focus

on low probability-high outcome events such as biological, chemical, nuclear, or radiological terrorism. Natural events-floods, spread of disease, even tornadoes- are sometimes predictable, although the specific effects of any given natural event

are far from certain. For example, as a result of data collected during the time period 1944-1999, "NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] data shows that New Orleans has a 40 percent chance of getting hit by a hurricane

or tropical storm in any given year" (Scalet 2006, 3). Potential terrorist events are far less predictable-terrorists can "learn and adapt. They can improve the probability that they will launch a successful attack in the United States through

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Challenges to Federalism 83

research and practice" (Scalet 2006, 4). And it is important to note that risk analysis is not simply a mathematical process of extrapolating from past events to determine their future frequency. Establishing the probability of risk is inherently political; subjective probability is determined not only technically but

also through media attention, the input of influential participants in the process,

and generalizing from "personal and family traumas" (Waugh 2004, 1). Perhaps because of their drama and impact, focusing events appear to have

a much larger role in determining homeland security policy than some other policy areas. This, in turn, leads to an odd conversation between, on the one hand,

local emergency managers who view the policy area as disaster management- something they see as having existed for more than 300 years-and, on the other

hand, DHS officials who see the policy area as having been virtually created on 9/11 and so everything they do is seemingly without precedent.

The time period from 2001 to 2005 is bookended by two major focusing events-

9/11 and the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005. We argue that each of these challenged the

definition of significant underlying problems in U.S. federalism and also resulted in the

intergovernmental approach to problem-solving traditionally used in the U.S. becoming a scapegoat for various shortcomings in governmental responses to the two

events. The result of this has been increased tension in the intergovernmental system

associated with the (largely) local emergency planning system, on the one hand, and

national DHS and Bush Administration officials on the other. We fully recognize that

the U.S. federal system from its very origins has been characterized by debates on the

relative advantages of centralized versus decentralized approaches to addressing structural and policy problems. We suggest, however, that 9/11 and Katrina have raised

the possibility of igniting a national reconsideration of the fundamental nature of

American federalism and how it should be organized to more effectively contend with

the problems of the twenty-first century.

In writing about response to major disasters, we are cognizant that no matter

how good the plan or how well-prepared the actors, things often can and do go wrong. Successful reaction to a major disaster is partially a function of highly- trained personnel being well prepared, but it is also a function of less specifiable

factors such as serendipity and probability. Comfort (2002) writes:

The effective mobilization of response to extreme events on a large scale is

one of the least understood problems in public management. This process requires the rapid search, exchange, and absorption of valid information regarding sudden, damaging events transmitted through a network of organi-

zations that crosses disciplinary, organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.

It requires pre-disaster planning among organizations to identify what infor- mation will be required and how this information may be accessed. It entails

the rapid comprehension of danger that, under ordinary circumstances,

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84 C. Scavo et al.

would be unimaginable. It requires the ability to use that powerful insight

to anticipate the spread of risk through an interdependent community and to

devise actions that will interrupt or limit the risk. It means discovering the

'logic' that will govern the ensuing uncertainty in technical and organizational

performance. This is an inference process that functions more through the

rapid recognition of signals and symbols and the use of mental models than

on rule-based reasoning (Comfort 2002, 32).

Schneider writes that the intergovernmental dynamics of emergency and disaster

response can be described as one of three different patterns-a top-down approach

where "the national government takes control of the entire recovery effort.... [since] state and local governments are unable or unwilling to deal with a serious

crisis;" a confusion approach where "there is little or no coordination" to the efforts of various governments to address a crisis; and a shared-governance approach where "the system works from the 'bottom-up.' The response 'bubbles up' from the local area to the state and ultimately to the national government" (Schneider 1990, 101-102). One can see the implications of all three of these approaches in the efforts to deal with the Gulf Coast hurricanes in a threat environment largely defined by 9/11. We think, however, that there has been an

evolution in the intergovernmental dynamics of emergency and disaster response

that has resulted in a combination of the 'confusion' and 'bottom-up' patterns Schneider describes. This combination has been termed a networked approach (International City/County Management Association 2006; Wise and Nader 2006).

It requires that not only do responses 'bubble up,' but that states and the federal

government provide funding, training, and coordination of emergency response

before, during, and after any disaster occurs.

Using a major survey of local government managers conducted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA)2 and other survey data, along with a review of the current scholarly literature and government reports, the article summarizes the view of the threat environment in 2005 (pre-Katrina) 'from the bottom.' In short, we find that while national leaders were

attempting to centralize the system further, seeking a more efficient, 'rational'

approach to homeland security management (the top-down approach Schneider identifies above), local managers were arguing that they had a great deal of experience in emergency management (the shared governance or bottom-up approach) but needed further help to transition to a new, more anti-terrorism focused threat environment post-9/11, resulting in the worst aspects of the confusion approach. While much has been written in the national press and by analysts who have

examined DHS priorities from the top down (Glaser and White 2005; Preston 2005, 2006; Ripley 2004), less is known about the views of local government

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Challenges to Federalism 85

officials-the view from the bottom up-even though DHS is congressionally mandated to consider the views of local governments in developing funding priorities and programs. Critics have often complained about DHS's lack of attention to local government (Holdeman 2005), but neither DHS nor scholars have made systematic efforts to collect data from local governments that would

indicate what effects local government officials see DHS efforts as having on local

priorities.

The 2005 ICMA Survey of Local Officials

Partially to address these deficiencies, the authors of this article developed, and the

ICMA conducted, a survey in spring and summer 2005 that assessed three different

areas of local government homeland security activity and effects-management, budget, and education/awareness and training. In each of these broad areas, local

government managers were asked to report the level of activity their government

had undertaken, their views of the threat environment, their degree of collaboration

with other agencies and governments, the funding they had requested and received,

the budgetary impacts of homeland security activities, and other concerns.

Surveys were sent to 7,968 city and county officials. Responses were received

from 2,786 of these for an overall response rate of 35 percent. The sample includes

responses from officials in 2,441 cities (response rate 34 percent) ranging in population from 2,500 to over 1,000,000 and from 345 counties (response rate 41

percent) ranging in population from under 2,500 to over 1,000,000. The respond-

ing local governments were fairly representative of their population with a slight under-representation of smaller municipalities-those with populations below 10,000 (Scavo, Kearney, and Kilroy 2006).

These data represent a new resource for analyzing DHS priorities and local government perceptions from the ground up. These data offer several advantages:

* The data were collected in spring and summer 2005 and thus represent a time point that is four years post-9/11 but a few months pre-Katrina. They thus provide a snapshot of local government managers' perceptions of the homeland

security environment that is not heavily determined by a recent crisis. Because

the data were collected a few months before the Gulf Coast hurricanes, they provide more of a baseline view of the intergovernmental homeland security/

emergency/disaster environment-a more normal view than would surveys conducted after the hurricanes;

* The data set is large with 2,786 cases thus allowing for examination of more sub-samples than other national samples might permit;

* The respondents are city and county managers, administrators, or (typically in small jurisdictions) elected officials, rather than directors of emergency

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86 C. Scavo et al.

management or first responders. These managers are the most familiar with the

overall financial and administrative issues that increased homeland security efforts might raise; and,

* ICMA has a long history of collecting such data and local managers and elected officials around the country are familiar with ICMA surveys. More straightforward and unbiased data may be the result of this familiarity with ICMA data collection efforts.

However, the data set does have two major flaws. First, owing to ICMA data confidentiality agreements, unforeseen by the authors, many identifying charac-

teristics in the data have been eliminated. Thus, we cannot disaggregate informa-

tion to levels finer than the region nor can we merge other data sets into this one.3

Second, the survey was specifically designed to elicit responses to the homeland

security threat environment, thus most likely underestimating concerns about natural disasters and overestimating concerns about potential terrorist events. However, we do not use the survey to evaluate the relative importance of emergency/disaster management versus homeland security but instead to examine

managers' views of the interactions between levels of government in the broader

field that is both of these. We think, therefore, that we can extrapolate the patterns

we identify in the survey data to the broader subject.

DHS Policies and Tension in the U.S. IGR System

DHS funding mandates on state and local governments have represented an attempt to strengthen the role of national government authority vis-a-vis that

of state and local governments-this much is clear. Whether this strengthening of

federal powers is normatively good or bad is highly dependent on one's underlying

view of federalism. Kettl has argued this point by observing that the responses to terrorism represent the "deep and historic tensions between those who say,

'Give local governments flexibility and more money to create a better system from

the bottom up' and those who argue the need for a more integrated system from

the top down" (Kettl 2003, 5). But the federal role has not been one of explicitly

and directly addressing this tension; rather, as Eisenger has written, "The federal

role in the homeland security partnership is a mix of highly centralized control and

the sort of diffidence that has come to characterize more routine intergovernmental

relations" (Eisenger 2006, 541). And the simple provision of federal funding is not

the answer-as Scott Wells, the FEMA deputy Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO) for Louisiana during Katrina and FCO for Texas during Hurricane Rita, asserted in

his testimony before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Committee (Wells 2005, 7), "The current system does not provide the maximum

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Challenges to Federalism 87

benefit and return on taxpayers' dollars, hampers states in the execution of their

responsibilities, and degrades disaster response and recovery operations."

Each time the federal government has attempted to further centralize homeland

security efforts, they have been successfully resisted by state and local governments

who make the empirically correct claim that the vast majority of homeland security

incidents will require response by state and, especially, local government. As of the publication of this article, the Stafford Act, naming governors as the lead

in determining the level of federal response being requested, is still in effect. The

argument over federal versus state/local authority gets fought out legislatively as

a series of battles over preemption of traditional state powers. For example, the REAL ID Act of 2005, which requires state drivers' licenses to meet federal identification standards if those licenses are going to be accepted for federal identification purposes, is being hotly contested by state and local governments as

overly costly and administratively complex (Dinan and Krane 2006). It gets fought

out administratively through such controversies as who should be in charge of National Guard troops sent into New Orleans after Katrina-the governor of Louisiana or the president of the United States. And it gets fought out financially

through battles over the amount and distribution of funding that the federal government will provide (and whether it will be through grants or loans) for recovery after catastrophes like 9/11 or Katrina.

We can demonstrate this intergovernmental tension in a number of ways using

other data sources and our own. For example, the US Conference of Mayors (2002,

2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2006) has surveyed a relatively small sample (fewer than 250)

of cities about their experiences in homeland security over the 2001 through 2006 time period. In the latest study (US Conference of Mayors 2006), some 80 percent

of responding cities reported that they had not received sufficient federal resources

to achieve full communications interoperability, 72 percent responded that they

had not been informed (since Katrina) that there was a previously assigned FEMA

Principal Federal Officer (PFO), and 70 percent reported that they were largely unprepared to respond to a pandemic flu outbreak on their own (while 70 percent

reported they had been contacted by the federal government to discuss preparedness and response to such a pandemic outbreak). The Urban Institute, in commenting on relief efforts after Katrina, has said:

The shared federal-state-local responsibility for the programs [housing assistance, income replacement, health care, and cash assistance] ... can make

them complex even under normal circumstances.... Some of the tensions

that Katrina intensified-such as existence of widely different state UI [unemployment insurance] benefits and eligibility policies at the same time

the workforce is highly mobile-exist to a lesser extent at all times.... Katrina offers policymakers and others the opportunity to address these

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88 C. Scavo et al.

Table 1 Ease of understanding and timeliness of Homeland security information supplied by the Federal Government and State Governments

Percentage who

Percentage who Percentage who disagree/strongly strongly agree/agree are neutral disagree

Federal Government information 51.8 (1384) 28.9 (773) 19.3 (515)

is easily understood

State Government information 65.2 (1748) 22.8 (611) 12.0 (322)

is easily understood

Federal Government information 44.8 (1198) 32.5 (869) 22.7 (607)

is timely

State Government information 54.9 (1468) 26.1 (698) 18.2 (509)

is timely

critical questions.... (Winston, Golden, Finegold, Rueben, Turner, and Zuckerman 2006, 16-17).

From the ICMA data, we can show that information provided by the federal government is viewed both less positively and more negatively than is information

from state governments. Table 1 shows the results. While a majority or near majority of all respondents find information from both the federal government and

state governments to be both understandable and timely, a lower percentage of respondents agree or strongly agree that information supplied by the federal government is easily understood compared to information supplied by the states.

The same tendency also exists for the timeliness of information. These findings

raise questions about the competence of the federal government to lead efforts to enhance homeland security.

Local Government Homeland Security Activities in 2005

In the several months before the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005, local managers in

the U.S. were reporting a high level of activity with respect to homeland security

while also indicating some unease with both the federal and state government efforts in this field. In the ICMA survey, we assessed levels of local government

activity across nine different areas. Greater than 50 percent reported engaging in six of the nine activities; less than a majority reported activity for plans based

on the color codes (35 percent), appointing/hiring a manager (32 percent), and participating in DHS National Exercise Program (23 percent). The top half of Table 2 reports these activities. A second observation drawn from Table 2 is the

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Table 2 Local Government Homeland security management activities undertaken

Percentage of Local Governements with population

Total Under 10K 10K-50K 50K-100K 100K-500K Over 500K Total N

Activity

Included mutual aid partners in emergency planning and 85.3 76.7 88.5 95.7 97.0 100 2666 preparedness activities

Conducted a homeland security-related risk assessment 81.4 69.2 86.2 95.1 98.3 100 2623 Developed a comprehensive homeland security-related plan or 63.8 51.6 66.8 76.1 89.4 93.5 2573

amended an existing emergency management plan

Adopted the National Incident Management System (NIMS)? 66.6 53.5 73.4 76.0 79.8 86.2 2434 Conducted disaster or emergency training for non-first responders 57.1 38.0 63.8 77.1 88.8 96.8 2643

such as administrative staff

Conducted a homeland security-related drill or exercise 55.8 34.6 62.0 81.9 91.5 100 2616 Developed local response plans based on changes to the 38.1 22.8 42.1 55.0 68.6 75.0 2576

Homeland Security Advisory System

Hired/appointed a homeland security/emergency manager to help 32.8 22.8 32.9 42.9 62.4 80.0 2679 coordinate federal/state/local security functions for local

government

Participated in the DHS National Exercise Program 26.4 15.1 27.6 36.4 58.7 61.3 2471

(continued)

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Table 2 Continued

Percentage of Local Governements with population

Total Under 10K 10K-50K 50K-100K 100K-500K Over 500K Total N

Collaboration with

Other Local Governments 87.9 82.4 89.7 95.0 97.5 96.9 2786

Your State Government 72.1 59.1 77.4 84.7 94.5 100 2786

Regional Organizations 58.3 48.2 63.0 65.1 76.1 78.1 2786 DHS/FEMA 51.7 40.5 53.7 61.7 81.1 90.6 2786

FBI/Department of Justice 40.3 23.8 43.6 59.0 79.4 87.5 2786 Nongovernmental Organizations 34.9 21.2 35.3 51.7 75.6 81.3 2786 Department of Health and Human Services 29.0 20.0 28.0 37.2 61.8 78.1 2786 Local Military Installation 20.8 11.1 20.9 28.0 53.8 65.6 2786 Department of Defense 12.5 5.9 11.4 20.7 34.9 56.3 2786 Other State Governments 11.3 7.8 10.7 13.0 26.1 37.5 2786

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Challenges to Federalism 91

very high association between activity and population-larger percentages of managers from large population communities report activity than managers in smaller communities.

The local managers also reported a high level of collaboration with others in homeland security issues (see bottom half of Table 2). Very high proportions reported collaboration across the nine different areas shown in Table 2. Once again,

collaboration is highly correlated with population size, although here the relationship is not as strong as it is for activity.

The federal funding formula for Homeland Security demonstrates the tension

that lies in the intergovernmental system. Federal law (e.g., the Urban Areas Security Initiative) mandates that states obligate 80 percent of HLS funds to local

governments. A substantial amount of homeland security grants under the Patriot

Act were required to be divided among the states with no consideration of risk or need assessment. And the risk-formula-based 2006 Urban Areas Security Initiative grants of $711 million improbably slashed funds for New York City and Washington while significantly boosting monies for Louisville, Omaha, and Charlotte (Lipton 2006). Overall, 2006 distributions were hundreds of millions of

dollars below the previous year's allocations. Similarly, funding for the Emergency

Management Performance Grant, the only source of federal funds for assisting states and local governments with natural disaster planning and preparedness, has also been cut.

The local government officials reported high levels of requests for federal monies, awards of federal monies, requests for state monies, awards of state monies, and the use of own-source funding for these activities. Table 3 presents data on these funding sources.

The single most requested item by local government from either federal or state government was equipment (50 percent requested from state governments; 47 percent requested from the federal government). Equipment was also the most

popular single item awarded funding-40 percent of local government reported receiving funding for equipment from state governments whereas 42 percent reported receiving for equipment funding from the federal government. Substantial numbers of local government officials also report requesting and receiving funding from either state governments or the federal government for

disaster mitigation/preparedness, disaster response, and drills and training exercises.

Several different studies have shown that the first several rounds of DHS funding to

state and local governments were primarily used for equipment purchase such as communications equipment, HAZMAT suits, fencing, and metal detectors and for the development of emergency and disaster plans ("Homeland Security Outlook" 2002; 2003; 2004). As equipments needs have become satisfied and as a larger number of local governments have gone through the first stages of disaster/emergency planning, we can expect that funding priorities will change

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92 C. Scavo et al.

Table 3 Sources of funding for Homeland security-related activities

Percentage of Local Governments

requesting/awarded funding from

State Government Federal Government

Used own

Requested Awarded Success Requested Awarded Success source funds

Drills and training 27.8 23.1 83.1 22.0 19.8 90.0 55.2 exercises

Equipment 50.3 39.5 78.5 47.4 41.5 87.6 59.3 Disaster mitigation/ 33.4 23.8 71.3 25.9 21.1 81.5 55.5

preparedness

Disaster response 30.4 24.1 79.3 28.0 24.4 87.1 51.7 Staffing 9.3 5.0 53.8 9.9 5.8 58.6 38.6 Public education 13.4 10.4 77.6 12.7 10.9 85.8 37.0

Physical surveillance/ 18.0 11.4 63.3 17.2 13.1 76.2 35.5 security systems

Information security 8.5 4.5 52.9 8.1 6.0 74.1 34.9 Cyber security 3.7 1.8 48.6 3.7 2.7 73.0 20.4 Med/public health sur- 7.5 5.5 73.3 6.5 6.1 93.8 11.3

veillance systems

Other programs and 2.2 1.4 63.6 2.8 1.9 67.9 2.8 needs

Average 18.6 13.7 73.7 16.7 13.9 83.2 36.6

Base = total respondents, or 2,786.

somewhat to longer term and on-going activities-education, staffing, and cyber-security.

Another way of examining the predilection to purchase equipment is to look

at the success rate-the award/requested ratio-of local governments in seeking funding for homeland security funding from both state governments and the federal government. Table 3 contains data on these rates. Local governments seem

to be most successful in seeking funds from their state governments and from the

federal government in the areas of drills and training exercises, equipment, disaster

response, public education, and medical and public health surveillance systems (although the small number of local governments reporting seeking and being awarded funding for this last activity makes statistics calculated on this somewhat

suspect.) Much lower success rates are reported for cyber-security, information security, and staffing.

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Challenges to Federalism 93

Table 4 Budget shortfalls and personnel layoffs as a result of increased Homeland security activities

Percentage of Local Governments with population

Total Under 10K 10K-50K 50K-100K IOOK-500K Over 500K Total N

In the last two years, have you:

Experienced budget 23.0 17.5 25.2 24.9 34.6 40.0 2152 shortfalls

Laid off police officers 20.4 19.9 20.9 21.4 17.9 30.0 2684 Laid off fire fighters 10.6 6.4 12.4 14.4 16.2 20.7 2552 Laid off emergency 5.5 3.7 5.4 7.5 10.4 16.7 2470

management/

response personnel

Laid off emergency 5.4 4.5 5.7 6.6 6.9 3.7 2430 medical services

personnel

Laid off public health 4.3 2.2 4.3 5.6 11.4 15.4 2332 personnel

Laid off public works 16.4 14.2 17.6 18.0 18.0 31.0 2565 personnel

Laid off public utilities 6.9 6.8 6.9 7.2 6.8 8.7 2418 personnel

Laid off other personnel 2.4 1.6 1.9 3.7 6.7 18.2 1361

It is also clear from Table 3 that a much larger percentage of local governments

used their own sources of funding across the eleven areas than they did federal or

state funds, while about the same percentage reported receiving federal funds as reported receiving state funds. This pattern, which has also been identified in other

local government surveys ("Homeland Security Outlook" 2004), has no doubt been strengthened in many cities as a result of smaller federal appropriations in recent years.

The survey asked city and county officials to report how much federal and state

funding they had received in 2004. The minimum amount of federal funds city and

county officials reported receiving was zero; the maximum was $22 million (mean = $146,338). The minimum of state funds received was, of course, also zero;

the maximum was $9,819,000 (mean = $50,418).

Requests for and receipt of both state and federal funding and the use of own

source funding were also positively correlated with population size, although the

correlations were not as high as one might think (0.17 for requested state funding,

0.22 for awarded state funding, 0.32 for requested federal funding, 0.42 for awarded

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94 C. Scavo et al.

federal funding, and 0.27 for used own-source funds). However, the smallest population governments were also disproportionately those that had not requested,

received, or used own-source funding for any homeland security activities. There

are statistically significant differences in population between those that had requested state funding and those who had not (difference in population = 9,631),

those that had requested federal funding and those that had not (difference= 33,653), those that were awarded state funding and those that were

not (difference = 24,617), and those that were awarded federal funding and those

that were not (difference = 47,055). Likewise, there is a large difference in population between those local governments that had used own source funding and those that had not (difference= 31,538).

In addition, the mean amount of funding requested and awarded by either the

states or the federal government differed greatly according to population size. The smallest population governments (10,000 and under) report a mean level of federal awards of $17,238 and state awards of $12,770. The amount of funding from both the federal government and the states rises monotonically to the largest

population size units (over 500,000) who report mean federal awards of just over

$3.5 million and state awards of just over $700,000. Per capita funding, however,

does not vary much by population size ranging from a low of $3.19 of federal funding for those with populations over 500,000 to a high of $3.66 to those with

populations in the 50,000-100,000 range. Analogous figures for state funding are a low of $0.94 per person for those with populations over 500,000 to a high of $2.50

per person for those with populations of 10,000 or below. All total amounts of federal and state funding were significantly related to population size whereas no per capita funding was significantly related to population size.

Despite these federal and state homeland security transfers, a fairly large number

of local officials (23 percent) reported that their governments had run a deficit

in their budget as a result of increased attention to homeland security. And as a

result of this deficit, some 20 percent reported laying off police officers, 11 percent

laid off fire fighters, 16 percent public works employees, 7 percent public utilities

employees, 6 percent emergency managers, 5 percent emergency medical service

employees, 4 percent public health employees, and 2 percent other employees. Overall, approximately 28 percent of officials reported their governments had laid

off employees as a result of increased homeland security activities in at least one of

the eight areas queried. Smaller population areas tended to undergo fewer layoffs,

most likely the result of having fewer employees to begin with. Some 25 percent of the communities under 10,000 in population laid off employees in at least one of the eight areas, 29 percent of those between 10,000 and 50,000, 29 percent of those between 50,000 and 100,000, 33 percent of those between 100,000 and 500,000, and 37 percent of those over 500,000 in population.

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Challenges to Federalism 95

The magnitude of the personnel reductions and budgetary shortfalls associated

with increased expenditures for homeland security activities is one of the most troubling findings in this survey (Scavo, Kearney, and Kilroy 2006, 23). And, in a

refrain played over and over in intergovernmental relations, federal mandates have

grown while federal dollars have fallen short of homeland security and emergency

preparedness promises. As in other policy areas-education, social services, health

care-the federal government has attempted to shift responsibility for providing

services to the state and local governments without providing sufficient funding to do so.

Local government managers also reported needs for training in the eight areas

we queried in the ICMA survey-critical infrastructure protection; emergency planning, preparedness, and response; biohazard awareness and identification; chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, high-yield explosives attacks and responses; grant development and writing; cyber-security; volunteer efforts and

donations; and media communications. A majority reported needs for training for

seven of these eight areas, while a near majority (48 percent) reported training needs in the eighth area (media communications). And the needs for training increased as did the population of the jurisdiction-about 26 percent of local government managers in communities below 10,000 in population reported needing training in at least one area we queried and this percentage increases to 38 percent for those respondents in the largest population (>500,000).

The key findings from the 2005 ICMA survey are that (i) the local governments

are doing a great deal to secure the homeland; (ii). they are collaborating with other local governments-local, state, and federal-in doing so; (iii) they are spending their own funds over and above the amounts of state and federal funds

available for such purposes and they are doing so even though they need to lay off key personnel to maintain their homeland security efforts. In short, local governments have made serious and substantial efforts to plan for and cope with

the next possible disaster.

Federal Funding and Local Preparedness

Were state and local governments any better prepared in 2005 than they were in 2001 to face disasters-whether natural or man-made? Did the federal and

state governments' dispersal of large amounts of financial assistance and the use

of significant amounts of own-source funding 'buy security' for state and local governments? These are important questions confronting DHS and FEMA national planners on the one hand, and state and local emergency planners and responders on the other. While definitive answers to these questions are not

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96 C. Scavo et al.

available, we can assemble pieces of evidence that may go some way toward developing an answer:

1. The Bush Administration and DHS focused on terrorism as the major disaster threat to the nation (Office of Homeland Security, 2002). This is evident in the

funds available to state and local government, in the DHS budget requests, and in the information being dispersed to state and local government. A 2005

GAO report on DHS's spending concluded that 75 percent of DHS's planned 2005-06 spending would be for terrorism-focused programs (U.S. Government

Accountability Office 2005). The original version of the NRP was developed largely for terrorism-related incidents.

2. The creation of the DHS in 2003 was such a huge bureaucratic undertaking that melding together the twenty-two federal agencies and developing a common organizational culture may have taken precedence over both what the

department was originally organized to do and its relationships with state and

local government. Kettl (2003, 4) has said, "The people in Washington working

on it are so preoccupied by the tremendous difficulty of the structural issues

that the intergovernmental issues-which, in many ways, are the hardest pieces

of the puzzle-are likely to get either short shrift or little attention at all in the discussion."

3. Local government managers reported some confusion in understanding homeland security-related information coming from both the federal and state governments. Nearly one in five (19 percent) thought that information

received from the federal government was not easy to understand and almost

one in four (23 percent) thought that information received from the federal

government was not timely. Less dissatisfaction was apparent with information

received from state governments with 12 percent thinking the information

was not easy to understand and 19 percent thinking that was not timely.

4. Local emergency managers understood the focus on terrorism and tried to remediate it, but they also danced to the tune of DHS's offers of funding. Walter Peacock, the director of Texas A&M University's Hazard Reduction and

Recovery Center, was quoted in the Washington Post about the creation of DHS, "People were thinking about the possibility of terrorism. They weren't

thinking about the reality of a hurricane" (Glaser and White 2005, A01). And

Eric Holdeman, the director of the King County (WA) Office of Emergency Management wrote (just after Katrina), "Our 'all-hazards' approaches are being

decimated by the administration's preoccupation with terrorism" (Holdeman,

2005, A17). As with many other programs, the incentives of federal monies,

rather than local program needs, drove local priorities.

5. Since the creation of DHS, FEMA's budget has been reduced each year an'd several of its key functions have been reassigned to other parts of DHS.

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Challenges to Federalism 97

Since Katrina, an active discussion has taken place about the future of the agency, with proposals ranging from abolition to spinning FEMA off as an independent agency again, and/or putting the military in charge of large-scale disaster relief (Wise and Nader 2006; VandeHei and White 2005).

6. Some DHS and FEMA officials agree that the state and local dimension may have been neglected in the orientation of the department and the agency. In his

testimony before Congress, FEMA deputy FCO for Louisiana in 2005, Scott Wells (2005) made a distinction between a federal response that was 'too slow'

and one that was 'inadequate.' Wells said the federal response to Katrina was not too slow but that it was inadequate, and partially laid the blame for this on

"the need to strengthen the emergency management capability at the state and

local level." According to Wells, "Local/state emergency management staff size

(and expertise in many cases) is generally inadequate to perform the critical functions during response operations. This also applies to pre-disaster planning

and preparedness activities. States do not have sufficient staff and resources to

accomplish the requisite planning/preparedness activities to attain a viable readiness posture for a large to catastrophic disaster" (Wells 2005, 4). Ironically, state and local capability to react to terrorist events may have been

over-estimated by DHS since the events of 9/11 occurred in "two of communities in the country [Arlington, VA and New York City] best prepared

to deal with the consequences" Kettl (2003, 6).

Wells' statements affirm a conclusion that could have been drawn from the

ICMA survey some six months before Katrina. Shining the policy spotlight on the underlying problems such as the lack of training and staff at the local and state

level, and inadequate planning virtually required a focusing event of Katrina's magnitude to accomplish policy change.

Although there is a great deal of similarity among terrorism mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery and the same four steps in dealing with natural disasters, at some point the two models diverge. Terrorism is, after all, a crime and because of this, there is the need to preserve the crime scene, ensure

chains of evidence, and determine who is responsible for the act. These latter needs

can collide with the traditional emergency management efforts involved in response

and recovery. For example, a traditional emergency management response to a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado would be to evacuate population. But if the

event were a bio-terrorism attack, evacuation could spread the biological vector to the larger population. Thus there is a need to make distinctions in the response

model depending on the type of emergency or disaster occurring.

But the Federal government's orientation after 9/11 was not nuanced enough to make these distinctions nor were its training efforts aggressive enough to bring local emergency managers up to speed in addressing a major catastrophe.

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98 C. Scavo et al.

Milliman, Grosskopf, and Paez (2006a, 2006b) reported a very low level of local emergency responders' knowledge of and participation in the Defense Support to

Civil Authorities/Military Assistance to Civil Authorities (DSCA/MACA) education

programs. They quote one local emergency manager, "We have only had one briefing in five years that I have been Public Safety Director for my County that

explained MACA and the resources, capabilities, etc. that the military overall can

provide. I would urge more visible and detailed informational briefings to emergency managers" (Milliman, Grosskopf, and Paez, 2006b, 5). The magnitude of Katrina and, particularly and dramatically, the breaching

of the levees in New Orleans, although both possibilities noted in a 2001 FEMA report that rated the highest probability risks facing the U.S. and the Hurricane Pam disaster drill conducted in New Orleans in 2004, seemed to catch all levels

of government by surprise.

Admiral Allen and the Coast Guard were, in many ways, the heroes of the post-Katrina relief efforts (Brinkley 2006). There are several reasons why the

Coast Guard responded so effectively to this event. First, Coast Guard doctrine calls

for safeguarding assets before any major event-so the Coast Guard moved boats and personnel to relatively safer havens temporarily in order to have them available

for post-storm recovery. This allowed these assets to come into play immediately

after the storm had passed, in stark contrast to state-local transportation and rescue assets. Second, the Coast Guard has a long history of dealing with severe weather events and can draw on its experiences in developing flexible responses to such events. While FEMA employees are also trained in such response, they are not first responders, and their role in any emergency or disaster is different

from that of the Coast Guard or others who are truly on the front lines. Allen (Ripley 2006) spoke about this in response to a question by a Time magazine interviewer:

Ripley: Are there any misconceptions that have taken hold about Katrina that

you'd like to debunk?

Allen: Yeah, this is a personal opinion. We need to [consider] what the public

perceives FEMA's role should have been and what statutorily FEMA's role is.

Their protocol for a disaster is that locals go to the states, states go to the

Federal government, and they bring resources in. When we hit that tipping

point and the city flooded, it was not within FEMA's mission, capabilities or

competency to go out and direct actual rescue operations. The Coast Guard came in and did it because we're trained to do that. And whatever issues

there are with FEMA as an organization, I hope the public does not generalize to a larger responsibility for FEMA. No matter what anybody's issue is, there's a tendency to say the problem is FEMA. I don't think that's true.

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Challenges to Federalism 99

Third, the Coast Guard responded effectively because Admiral Allen, as the PFO, could draw on all federal assets to enforce his decisions and had a clear chain-

of-command. Fourth, much of the reason for the clearer chain-of-command is,

of course, that the Coast Guard is a military service. But as the smallest of all U.S.

military services, the Coast Guard has had a long history of cooperating with other

federal agencies in natural disasters, wars, and related events and may provide a model for future civilian-military cooperation in domestic homeland security related activity (Hannah 2005). As such, Allen's experiences in New Orleans and the rising concerns about inefficiencies in the intergovernmental responses to

large-scale disasters, in particular low-probability, high outcome disasters, have led

to discussions about giving the military lead role status in emergency and disaster

management (VandeHei and White 2005).

Nationalizing Homeland Security and Emergency Response?

The National Guard, under the orders of the governors4, has traditionally provided

the first line of defense against domestic threats. Before the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, territorial defense and homeland security were not priority

mission areas for the DoD. The U.S. Atlantic Command, one of eight unified combatant commands in DoD, would occasionally be called upon to provide active duty forces stationed in the Continental U.S, to assist with environmental disasters,

such as Hurricane Andrew relief in 1992, or to fight forest fires in the west, or even

to help with domestic disturbances, such as the Los Angeles riots in 1992.

After 9/11, DoD moved quickly to reorganize various civil support and military activities, forming a new combatant command, U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), with responsibility for territorial defense of the Northern Hemisphere. In addition to providing continental defense of the U.S., the new command would also be responsible for U.S. military operations and regional security involving Mexico and Canada.

NORTHCOM's primary mission and responsibilities are territorial defense against terrorism, but the Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005 challenged the command

to exercise its civil defense role and its ability to mobilize active duty military forces

to assist with recovery and civil control. As this article has discussed, the extensive

damage to large population centers and loss of life attributed to Hurricanes Katrina

and Rita, combined with the inability of local and state agencies to provide timely

relief and security, created an increased demand for active duty military capabilities

to assist the FCO on the ground. NORTHCOM coordinated the military response to Hurricane Katrina through

Joint Task Force Katrina (JTF-K), located at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. Lieutenant

General Russell HonorS, the Commander of JTF-K, served as the Defense Coordi-

nating Officer (DCO). The active duty military response involved representatives

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100 C. Scavo et al.

from all services, including a Navy/Marine amphibious readiness group out of Norfolk, VA, Army helicopters from Ft. Hood, and Air Force helicopters from Patrick Air Force Base, Fla. and Moody Air Force Base, GA, to name just a few. Altogether, 22,000 active duty military personnel joined the 50,000 national guard

personnel in responding to Hurricane Katrina and later Rita (QDR 2006,16). The importance of the military response was further made evident as NORTHCOM headquarters in Colorado coordinated the responders through its extensive command and control center as Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf coast in

September 2005. Afterwards, President Bush called for Congress to consider expanding the military's role in responding to natural disasters, as well as man- made disasters, such as terrorism. According to statements made by the president,

it was not his intent to thrust the military into the lead for domestic response over

state and local agencies, but he did feel that in the case of a catastrophic event like

Katrina, there were legitimate considerations for the DoD to become the lead agency (by implication both federal and state) to "coordinate and lead the response effort." (VandeHei and White 2005).

What prompted the Bush charge to Congress was the aftermath of Katrina, which revealed the lack of coordination and communication between federal

agencies, and the dysfunctional response of state and local agencies because of the

magnitude of the disaster. In one reported incident, five helicopters from different

agencies showed up to rescue the same person. Such stories are reminiscent of similar experiences in which the lack of communication and intelligence, along with joint planning, hindered response, and rescue efforts.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said recently that the lessons from Katrina go

beyond reactions to natural disasters:

Katrina has been a lesson not only in how to react to a natural disaster, but also how to react to a man-made disaster.... So what we've learned

about emergency operations and evacuations out of Katrina is going to yield

dividends across the board in terms of preparedness for terror. Likewise, avian flu, which would be a natural disaster, is teaching us things about how

to react to a biological incident that would be very relevant if someone were

to attack us using biological means. There's real cross-fertilization here, which

is one of the reasons why running the department as a unified whole actually

winds up adding to our security level (Taylor 2006).

Likewise, proposals have been made to modify the NRP with Katrina-driven lessons in mind. Coast Guard Admiral Allen compared the destructive effects of Katrina to those of a massive terrorist attack. The problem was that the original

response to Katrina was based on the NRP for previous, much more limited natural disasters. When the levies were breached, the previous response model broke down

(Allen 2006).

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Challenges to Federalism 101

Thus, arguments for a nation-centered, hierarchical model of federalism to contend with terrorism and large natural disasters are persuasive in some quarters.

The notion of having someone or something "in charge" is undeniably appealing (Wise and Nader 2006, 310). But is it falling prey to the famous aphorism H. L. Mencken coined many years ago: "For every problem, there is one solution which

is simple, neat and wrong."

First, who or what would be the center of authority? The president? The DoD?

FEMA? DHS? What about the traditional governor's authority as commander of the state National Guard? Would the governors willingly hand over the con- stitutional responsibility for safeguarding their citizens to the national government?

In fact, multiple federal hierarchies and bureaucracies would have to be involved,

including the president, Congress, DoD, DHS, DOT, DOJ, and HUD (Wise and Nader 2006, 309-310). And as U.S. Sen.Patrick Leahy (D-VT) remarked concerning the annual defense authorization bill provision that would allow the president to

use the National Guard for domestic purposes:

We have learned that the Guard works optimally at home when it serves under the command-and-control of the nation's governors, with federal reimbursement, under Title 32 of the federal code. This Title 32 status

ensures that locally elected officials remain in control of military forces operating at home. Because the National Guard comes directly out of these local communities, posse comitatus statutes do not apply. This Title 32 arrangement has been used most recently to increase security at the border, but it has previously been used effectively to have the Guard provide

added security at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the G-8 Summit, the nation's airports, and around the Capitol Building in Washington (Leahy 2006).

Moreover, according to a 2005 GAO report, there are many more similarities than differences in preparedness, response, and recovery for terrorist attacks and

natural disasters. Should, then, all such incidents be managed by the same federal

hierarchy? How are nationally critical events (e.g., a devastating hurricane or earthquake) distinguished from events of only local impact (e.g., a range fire or local tornado)?

Dunlap (2006) has questioned the entire role of the military in disaster response

from the perspective of what this use might do to the reputation of the military

and its core mission of war fighting. "Conventionally trained soldiers advance on

potential threats with a view toward destroying them, not arresting them. They don't expect to reason with 'the enemy.... [P]olice rely on public respect for

the rule of law, expressed in the authority of the badge. They exercise the studied

restraint the judicial process requires. Suspects are not 'enemies' but citizens, innocent until proven guilty." The public's affection and admiration for the

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102 C. Scavo et al.

military may quickly erode if the military takes on routine police duties in disaster

zones. And as Dunlap writes, "Once the military loses the respect of ordinary Americans, what kind of person will want to enlist?" (Dunlap 2006, 17). In 1997,

active duty U.S. Marines assigned to anti-drug duty along the U.S. border shot and

killed an 18-year old U.S. citizen. In response to this, President Clinton's Director

of the White House National Office of National Drug Control Policy said, "The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General and I and others that don't

think it's a useful course of action, you really can't end up using military personnel for domestic law enforcement" (Bearden 1997).

An additional-and powerful-criticism of a federalized response model is the lack of adaptability of a centralized approach to a rapidly changing situation. Routinized tasks are programmable, but fluid events are unpredictable by definition, and demand adaptation and flexibility.

A certain amount of centralization in the intergovernmental emergency management system may be necessary but, given findings from the 2005 ICMA survey, Schneider's (1990, 101) depiction of a top-down model where "state and local governments are unable or unwilling to deal with a serious crisis" is not particularly apt. Beyond this, the replacement of the all-hazards, localized approach

that was developed primarily by state and local governments in the 1970s and 1980s with a single federally-imposed plan has serious drawbacks both in terms of

the previously mentioned effects on federal agencies such as the U.S. military and potential resistance from state and local officials. For example, Sylves (2006) shows

that the post-Katrina planning for Hurricane Wilma's landfall in Florida resulted in

a power struggle between DHS and state agencies. Florida Governor Jeb Bush did not want DHS to federalize the Wilma response. At the same time, NORTHCOM made plans to send the Fifth Army into Florida to assist with recovery operations,

even though no one in Florida had requested U.S. military assistance. Reportedly, General Clark, the Fifth Army commander, called the general in charge of the Florida National Guard to inform him that the Fifth Army wanted to begin flying

equipment into Florida. The National Guard general balked at this; the result was an end-run in which it was publicly announced at a televised press conference that the incident commander would be Governor Bush rather than a federal official

(Sylves 2006). Clearly, interoperability among federal, state, local, nonprofit, and private

responders is of utmost importance in disasters. As forcefully argued before Congress by Bruce Baughman (2006)-president of the National Emergency Management Association-consultation and collaboration with state and local governments is critical. The national government is an unlikely first responder to

catastrophic domestic events.

The goal, of course, is to avoid the lack of coordination and redundancy of effort in Schneider's confusion model and to achieve the interoperability of the

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Challenges to Federalism 103

shared governance model. There is much value in Wise and Nader's (2006, 313) assertion that a network model "most closely represents what is required" as the

base approach to setting up and managing emergency preparedness and response.

Interdependent organizations at all levels are needed to discern and negotiate the inherent uncertainties and unknowns of terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

ICMA (2006) also proposes a networked approach to emergency management, recommending specifically that FEMA's response capabilities be strengthened, federal structures and processes be realigned, more cost-effective funding mechan-

isms be developed, and a national database of human and capital resources be collected and made available with a geo-mapping tool. As the ICMA survey shows

(lower half of Table 1), the groundwork has already been laid by local governments

through extensive collaboration with states, regional organizations, and other local

governments.

Conclusion

We have attempted in this article to examine the tension in the intergovernmental

system that has arisen in the time period from the 9/11 attacks to the Gulf Coast

hurricanes, particularly as that tension is manifested in homeland security policy.

Homeland security discussions are dominated by dichotomies-local vs national; military vs civilian, emergency management vs homeland security, among many others. The debate over FEMA's fate in the aftermath of the Gulf Coast hurricanes

is just a single example. We know that such dichotomies are often false; a continuum better explains reality than do false dichotomies. Again, the Coast Guard may be a good example-a multiple mission, locally connected, military unit

that is not housed in DoD, and is therefore somewhat less 'military' than the Army or the Marines.

The current state of emergency management and homeland security is one that calls for a great deal of improvement. Whereas some researchers have focused on

the progress that has been made (e.g., Caruson and MacManus 2006), we instead concur with the recent DHS report that comments, "The majority of the Nation's

current emergency operations plans and planning processes cannot be characterized

as fully adequate, feasible, or acceptable to manage catastrophic events as defined in

the NRP.... Only 27 percent of State and 10 percent of urban area plans were rated as sufficient in terms of adequacy to cope with a catastrophic event" (DHS 2006, 62).

Kettl (2006) has compared 9/11 and the Gulf Coast hurricanes to cardiac stress

tests for the intergovernmental disaster reaction system in the U.S., tests that the

system failed. He writes that DHS should "work from the top down so that the system works from the bottom up. Most of DHS's efforts have been focused in

corralling its vast federal empire. Coordination with state and local governments

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104 C. Scavo et al.

has largely been an afterthought. But yet again, Katrina taught a fundamental lesson

of homeland security. Just as was the case on September 11, all homeland security

events start as local events. The federal response will fail if it is not part of an integrated national-federal, state, and local-plan" (Kettl 2006, 283). The NRP requires major revisions so that it can cope with what Admiral Allen

describes as a hybrid event. Katrina demonstrated that many homeland security

events require hybrid responses-combining provisions of the major scenarios the

NRP envisioned. This hybrid response, of course, raises questions of who would be

in charge of any such response. While it is tempting to put the military in charge-

and the experiences of Admiral Allen and Lieutenant General Honore in New Orleans are certainly shining examples of what military leaders can do in an

emergency environment-that response raises more questions than it answers. As the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) (1993, 107) report said on this,

[T]he panel does not recommend that this function be transferred to DoD.

Many of FEMA's problems with disaster response can be traced to a preoccupation with national security emergency preparedness. The panel believes that time has come to shift the emphasis from national security to

domestic civil emergency management using an all-hazards approach. In addition, making this function a routine part of the defense mission would

further complicate large issues of the Armed Forces' peacetime roles.

These complications still exist, of course, and so we believe that the military should only be used as a last resort. But the response also needs to be pre-planned so that the New Orleans scenario described by Admiral Allen does not occur again:

You have law enforcement officers walking around New Orleans that lost everything except civilian clothes they were wearing, no credentials, carrying

shoulder weapons. You have the 82nd Airborne and the Marine Corps walking around, operating under rules of engagement for DoD, and you have

a whole bunch of law enforcement guys flown in to try to help. Nobody's

wearing the same uniform (Allen 2006, 17).

Intergovernmental programs are complicated. The cooperation that is necessary

for these programs to be successful does not come easily to governmental officials

who are typically wary of ceding power to people outside of their jurisdictions and

who often feel success is measured only by their constituents' level of satisfaction.

Collaboration was not something rewarded substantially in the first several years of

DHS funding to state and local governments. DHS could assist in developing both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of homeland security policy by attaching

additional collaboration strings to future local government funding. Many local politicians may bristle at this but local emergency managers have been typically

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Challenges to Federalism 105

more accepting of working with managers in adjoining communities and so may actually flourish in such an environment.

Focusing events, especially large-scale ones, seem to have more of an impact in

emergency and disaster policy than in other policy areas.5 As Birkland (2006, 19)

comments, "The distribution of damage and deaths in disasters and accidents is not statistically normal; rather, the distribution of focusing events has a long 'tail,'

where a large number of relatively small events garner little attention, and a few big

events garner a great deal." Focusing events lead to policy change, but not all policy

change is in the normatively right direction.

Comprehensive risk assessment is an absolute requirement in preparing for both

natural and human-caused disasters. However, the risk assessment paradigm requires both a realistic estimate of potential outcomes and an approximation of

the probability that an event might occur. With low probability/high outcome events-especially events that have never occurred before-estimating the probability is difficult and often has a large margin of error. With natural hazards

and disasters, this may be somewhat simpler-estimating the probability of a volcano or a tsunami in Central Texas, for example, is an exercise in futility and

so these natural hazards were eliminated from a twenty-five year projection published by the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG 2004). With human-caused events, the probabilities are always shifting-and therefore are

harder to estimate-as terrorist groups learn and adapt, become more or less active, and change leadership.

There is no guarantee that the homeland can be absolutely secure. Terrorists can

design strikes that take advantage of pre-existing holes in any defensive system, whether that involves using airplanes as weapons, smuggling weapons in through container shipping, masquerading as legitimate trucking operations, or other unimaginable schemes. Natural disasters may occur that overwhelm reaction systems and also natural defenses. One can design and construct buildings that are

earthquake resistant but there is no building that is completely earthquake proof. Levees will fail at some point; bridges will collapse; chemical plants will catch fire;

evacuation routes will be jammed with last minute evacuees. Typically, when we think we have developed plans to cope with everything, man or nature comes up with a new event that tests our reactions. As the bumper sticker says, "Nature always laughs last." Our goal should be to make that a snicker rather than

a belly laugh.

The increasing federalization of homeland security policy was a natural result of

the focusing event of 9/11, and the Gulf Coast hurricanes have demonstrated what

can happen when a centralized federal plan is not nuanced enough to take different

problem definitions into account. As homeland security matures as a policy area, we expect that the role of focusing events may diminish, at least for top policy

makers in Washington. For the public, there will always be the stories of where you

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106 C. Scavo et al.

were when the planes hit or how you felt when you saw people clinging to rooftops

after the levees broke. Policy makers need to transcend these personal anecdotes

and to develop policy that actually addresses problems without completely remaking the American federal system.

Notes

1. Not that this is an entirely new discussion. One need only read Richard Sylves' 1994 PAR review of the National Academy of Public Administration's report on FEMA's

response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 to get an eerie sense of deji vu about the current discussions concerning FEMA.

2. The full 2005 ICMA homeland security questionnaire and marginal distribution of

responses can be accessed at http://www.icma.org/upload/bc/attach/%7B7D257F5D- 09C4-4CD8-8D96-13C9E5A75EOF%7Dhomelandsecurity2005web.pdf

3. In other work, we have been able to use unique ICMA record identifiers to merge several

data sets and thus to go beyond the specific topic of the individual survey. Our analyses

of reinventing government at the local level (Kearney and Scavo 2001; Kearney, Feldman, and Scavo 2000) were only possible because we were able to draw information

for the same set of local governments from two or more ICMA data sets.

4. A little noticed provision in the annual defense authorization bill-sponsored by Virginia Senator John Warner-however, allows the president to call up a state's National Guard without consulting the state's governor in case of "natural disaster,

epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident". See Kettl (2007).

5. Miskel (2006) cites the examples of Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and the Three Mile Island

nuclear power plant incident in 1979 as focusing events that remade federal disaster

policy.

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