No Surprise: FEMA Chief Brown Couldn’t Even Oversee Horse Shows

Last week when the whole world was glued to the television watching news and updates about the horrific events unfolding in New Orleans, the public comments made by FEMA director Mike Brown kept sounding more and more shocking and ignorant. This week there is an explanation for his bizarrely out of touch handling of the travesty—he can’t even oversee the judges of horse shows, so how can he oversee the management of thousands of relief workers and millions of dollars in unearthing New Orleans from the despair it is now suffering?

Yes, you read that correctly. Before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, Mike Brown was a GOP activist who had no significant political or management experience that would have qualified him for such a high-powered and important position. The only qualification that he had was his friendship with FEMA’s director, his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, who later quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign, whereupon the administration hired Brown to fill Allbaugh’s position as director. And now the agency, run by Brown since 2003, is at the center of a growing sense of outrage and anger at the way the New Orleans disaster has been handled. Louisiana Gov. Mitt Romney has called the response by FEMA "an embarrassment," and even President Bush has said that he is "not satisfied" with FEMA’s response to the situation. When asked about the government’s response to the horrific ravages delivered to Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina, Romney said, "I look at FEMA and I shake my head."

The man responsible for the government’s disastrous mishandling of relief efforts is none other than the previous Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horses Association. Brown spent 11 years in that position, a Colorado-based organization of breeders and horse show organizers. A spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner’s office explained what Brown’s duties were. "``We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained the spokeswoman. ``This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,'' she added. But Brown was asked to resign from his position in 2000, following a parade of lawsuits over his alleged failures in supervisory decisions. According to Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at that time, "He was asked to resign." And according to the New Hampshire Arabian Horse Association’s November 2000 newsletter, "There is a lot of unrest in this industry right now…Mike Brown, who was commissioner was requested to resign after all of the controversy regarding the number of lawsuits that are pending transpired."

The White House has blithely defended Brown’s appointment, saying that he had served as FEMA deputy director and general counsel before taking the top job, and that he has now overseen the response to ``more than 164 declared disasters and emergencies,'' including last year's record-setting hurricane season. And now a former estates and family lawyer who was asked to resign from his previous job overseeing horse shows—a man who is himself a human version of the back end of a horse—holds the lives of thousands of New Orleans citizens in his hands.

Last week Brown made plain to the world his incompetence when he said that FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation engulfing the New Orleans convention center, and he even said that he had not heard of any unrest in the streets, even going so far as to say that it depended on your definition of "unrest." Apparently the entire country was aware of the armed gangs shooting and looting their way through the streets of New Orleans, but the director of FEMA wasn’t watching the news. That certainly sounds like incompetence. Of course it depends on your definition of "incompetence."