A broken agency.

Byline: The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 9/14/2005): A Sept. 13 editorial described Mike Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as having been head of an Arabian horse organization. He was commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association.

Mike Brown resigned Monday as director of FEMA, three days after his bosses at the Department of Homeland Security and the White House called him back to Washington, D.C., and relieved him of operational responsibilities. By then his deficiencies had been on public display for two weeks: A concern for appearances over performance, an inability to focus on the urgent tasks at hand, and a knack for setting aside common sense.

Yet the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina revealed more than Brown's shortcomings. On the Gulf Coast the new Department of Homeland Security faced its first big test, and it failed. The department was created in response to the threat of terrorism, but even if that threat of terrorism miraculously disappeared, the nation would continue to face the danger of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and other natural calamities.

Brown was clearly in over his head. His only experience in the field of disaster relief came as a low-level assistant to the city manager in Edmond, Okla. Brown was head of an Arabian horse association before his former college roommate, then-FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh, himself a political appointee, brought him into the Bush administration. In 2002 Brown was confirmed as deputy FEMA director by the Senate, then under Democratic control, in sleepy proceedings.

The Department of Homeland Security was created later that year, and absorbed FEMA. The act creating the new department exempted officers from fresh confirmation hearings if their duties were "germane to their original duties." Allbaugh left FEMA in 2003, and Brown became director without further Senate review.

FEMA's status had already been downgraded through budget cuts and cronyism. After 2003, what was formerly a Cabinet-level agency became just another tentacle of a 21-agency octopus. Publicly, the Department of Homeland Security was concerned primarily with combating terrorism; natural disasters became a secondary concern. Behind the scenes, the new department was concerned mainly with reconciling the competing bureaucratic interests of agencies ranging from the Coast Guard to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The nation needs, and once had, an agency capable of responding to natural disasters - an agency that can marshal federal resources, cut through conflicts among jurisdictions and do it all quickly. Officials in New Orleans and Louisiana deserve their share of criticism for the slow response to Katrina, but in a national disaster a national agency should be able to take charge and get things done.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and others have proposed separating FEMA from Homeland Security, restoring the agency to its former Cabinet-level status. But the country doesn't need two agencies capable of preparing for and responding to disasters, whether natural or man-made. It needs one. Right now, it doesn't appear to have any.

What's needed is a professional, competent response to disaster. The Department of Homeland Security, if it can concern itself with both terrorism and natural disasters, and if it can end its internal turf wars, could become capable of delivering such a response. The federal government ought to be able to get food, water, medicine and other assistance to disaster victims. Brown's departure is a necessary first step, but it is far from sufficient.