AFGE Union on Michael Brown resignation
Tags: afge, michael brown, femaThis press release was issued Sep. 12:
"It's unfortunate that it's come to this, but this resignation was appropriate," said AFGE National President John Gage. "However, Mr. Brown's resignation does nothing to restore the slashed funding for disaster mitigation that FEMA has suffered. It does not undo the damage done by the connected contractors who were used to push aside career FEMA employees, only to provide unusable studies and materials.
"Only Congress can make this right," Gage concluded, "by restoring to FEMA full funding for emergency preparedness, as well as appropriating the dollars necessary for a comprehensive response to the nation's citizens in the throes of a crisis."
For years, AFGE members at FEMA have been ringing alarm bells, predicting the agency's inability to respond adequately to a natural disaster in the face of budget cuts and money thrown away on corporate contractors. In June 2004, the AFGE president of the local union at FEMA headquarters sent a letter to some 20 senators and members of Congress, begging for a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation into the cronyism and program- slashing that were threatening the agency's emergency-response capability.
In the letter, then AFGE Local President Pleasant Mann also expressed concern at the lack of emergency-response experience by then FEMA Director Joseph Allbaugh, who went on to appoint his college roommate, Michael Brown, to the agency's upper ranks. (Brown succeeded Allbaugh when the latter left the agency to become a lobbyist for Halliburton.)
This year, Local Union President Mann was succeeded by Leo Bosner, who describes Michael Brown as "a nice man" who lacks the appropriate experience for running FEMA…
