On May 9, the day after David Richardson was named the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the former Marine Corps officer warned the agency’s staff, “Don’t get in my way.” If anybody dared to obstruct his plans, he said, “I will run right over you.” Such swaggering bravado might be welcome if Richardson seemed dedicated to carrying out FEMA’s mission. But he wasn’t hired to carry out FEMA’s mission — he was hired to oversee FEMA’s demise. “We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” President Donald Trump said in June.
He was hired not to carry out FEMA’s mission but to oversee its demise.
Thus, in the aftermath of deadly flash floods in Texas — when FEMA should be expected to be highly visible and playing a major role in recovery efforts — nobody’s been able to get in Richardson’s way. Because he hasn’t been around. As the country has mourned the deaths of scores of people, including girls swept away from their summer camps by the Guadalupe River, and volunteers known as the Cajun Navy have mobilized rescue efforts, Richardson has been AWOL.
There are no reports of Richardson’s having been in Texas. He isn’t known to have led or even participated in any news conferences or to have given quotes to any news organization. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were no statements from Richardson about the Texas disaster to be found on FEMA’s website. FEMA did announce on its website Wednesday that it will open a disaster recovery center in Kerrville — in coordination with the Texas Division of Emergency Management and the Small Business Administration — on Thursday.
If you’re counting, that’s eight days after the flooding began.
Richardson, who has no experience in disaster response, was elevated to his role after the previous acting head of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, had the temerity to tell a House Appropriations Committee, “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” He was let go the next day.
There’s a well-known quote from Upton Sinclair that says “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” In this case, given the timing of his predecessor’s termination, it seems obvious that Richardson’s salary depends on his not understanding that, however flawed FEMA is, the American people need it.
But Richardson’s absence from public in the aftermath of the Texas disaster doesn’t matter as much as the exodus of top FEMA officials. In May the agency announced the departure of 16 senior officials, who had a combined 200 years in disaster expertise.
Chris Currie, who tracks and audits FEMA for the Government Accountability Office, told NBC News: “They are not doing anything different. They are just doing it with less people.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA, has declared that any FEMA expenditure of more than $100,000 has to get her personal sign-off. “FEMA doesn’t sneeze without spending that amount of money,” a former official, who requested anonymity because they are working in a related industry, told NBC News. A current FEMA official said Noem’s new rule means “they’re adding bureaucracy … and they’re adding cost.”
NBC News also reported Wednesday that FEMA officials have created a task force to speed up the process of getting Noem’s approval. Though it’s ridiculous that such a task force would be necessary, good for those officials for trying to remind the secretary that the agency’s job is to respond to emergencies — which require quick action, not Noem’s red tape dispenser.
“They are not doing anything different. They are just doing it with less people. One of the most persistent complaints about FEMA has been that state and local jurisdictions and households applying for help are consistently tied up in red tape. In March, Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., and Byron Donalds, R-Fla., jointly sponsored a bill that would make FEMA its own independent Cabinet agency and, Moskowitz said, “help cut red tape, improve government efficiency, and save lives.” President George W. Bush’s infamously picked Mike Brown, former head of the International Arabian Horse Association, to lead FEMA, and he was as useless as a leaky boat when Hurricane Katrina landed on the Gulf Coast in August 2005, leading to the deaths of over 1,800 people. My New Orleans house flooded in that storm, but I can attest that we knew who Brown was, and we saw him. His visibility, though, seemed to be inspired by love of the spotlight, not any love for the work. Richardson, on the other hand, is invisible. We should take his absence as a message in and of itself. Having FEMA doing highly visible and beneficial work now would destroy Trump’s case for destroying the agency. NBC News also reported Wednesday that FEMA officials have created a task force to speed up the process of getting Noem’s approval. Though it’s ridiculous that such a task force would be necessary, good for those officials for trying to remind the secretary that the agency’s job is to respond to emergencies — which require quick action, not Noem’s red tape dispenser.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
