One federal job no one wants: FEMA director

WASHINGTON — The calls went out across the nation, as Bush administration officials asked the country's most seasoned disaster-response experts to consider the job of a lifetime: FEMA director.

But again and again, the response the past several months was the same: "No, thanks."

Seven of these candidates for director or another top job at the Federal Emergency Management Agency said they had pulled themselves out of the running.

"You don't take the fire-chief job after someone has burned down the city unless you are going to be able to do it in the right fashion," said Ellis Stanley, general manager of emergency planning in Los Angeles, who said he was one of those called.

With the next hurricane season two months away, the Bush administration, several former and current FEMA officials said, intends to nominate R. David Paulison, a former fire official who has been filling in for the past seven months, to take the job permanently.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has acknowledged the difficulty of finding a permanent replacement for Michael Brown, who resigned in September after widespread criticism of his management of the response to Hurricane Katrina, as well as filling other senior posts at the agency and hundreds of lower-level jobs.

Today, of the 30 most senior jobs, 11 are filled by officials appointed on an acting basis, including the administrators in charge of critical functions such as operations, disaster recovery and disaster response.

The search has gone on so long that Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Homeland Department's budget, threatened Wednesday to hold up action on the budget bill until the top administrative posts at FEMA are filled.

Paulison, 59, spent most of his career at the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department, where he was chief from 1992 until 2001 and responded to emergencies, including Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Bush named him the U.S. fire administrator in 2001, and two years later he became FEMA's director of preparedness.