i need authorization from the congress. >> would you need authorization in order to honor those preferred stock purchases? there were issued in september of 2008? >> i would have to get back to you on that. >> thank you. . thank you. the secretary has now excuse yead you.

like to thank you i think we had a set of questions answered in a reasonable way, and we will now call the second panel. >> joining ous is craig fugate and also a new orleans times national reporter and chris strong. i thought we would start off in

new orleans and broaden it out from there. one thing going on is efforts to rewrite the response. one thing they talk about is creating designation for catastrophic events on the order of katrina so you can expedite money and make it more available quicker, so i am wondering every riding the stafford act is a good idea. >> -- wondering if read writing the stafford act as a good idea. -- rewriting the stafford act is

a good idea. >> we wonder if the act itself is a problem or the way it is implemented. we were able to free up and move funds that had been held up, and it was looking at coming back and applying a little more common sense and not be driven by procedures. we have a responsibility to be accountable, but i also think that many times we found ourselves of loggerheads with local officials over a process. >> the biggest ticket item was the hospital >> it was between the state and fema.

ultimately, it goes to the recovery act, and they declared the state deserved the money. if those not so fema does not have good judgment. it's a just and you should institutionalize the arbitration more broadly. >> this is already in process, so we wanted to see how it worked out. we went back to look of the first one with charity, and he said, why are we are doing this? we found with some of these projects, we have really gotten away from what we thought we should be doing in the first place, so we are coming back and looking at, why did we end up with that decision, and recognizing in the case of charity if you have the professional engineers on either

side, the fact that they are professional engineer should have a lot of weight on the decisions made about what is the impact and what should be the obligation of the federal government. we should look and say a federal engineer -- professional engineer is signing off on this. we should give it more weight. the professional engineer with a credible source of information. >> fema should have challenged the credibility along the way. >> a licensed professional engineer is going to write down and sign this finding. that should carry a lot more weight, and we should recognize that in our findings. >> the administration has put forward a $5 billion supplemental for the relief fund on the hill, and it is pending right now, but the house just approved it yesterday. what is that funding needed for?

why is the $5 billion necessary? >> in our disasters we have had going all the way back to -- some even earlier than katrina, you have various projects online. we do reimbursements. we do not necessarily always fun money up front. two big issues that came through is arbitration for filing for charity. another is an agreement we reached on the school district, which we consider a model way of approaching a large complex issues, that is going to be over $1 billion in itself, but taking all the school districts is doing one project for all the schools affected. as well, new disasters that are current, so we have an outstanding requirement for existing disasters, but what we expect to be paid out between

now and the fiscal year will be additional work paid -- work being done for iowa floods as well as new impact for this year. >> this additional supplemental is something that we occurs every year. every year there is a supplemental sent to the hill. members of congress are saying, isn't there a more rational way to incorporate this additional funding into the base budget for homeland security department? congressman david has a proposal to come up with the decision were the states pay into a fund, and the states draw out of the fund to cover expenses for disasters is there a more rational way to approach than money, rather than always doing it through supplemental? >> it comes back to, how do you want to develop your baseline budget? you want to develop it with a

huge bubble moving through the system. as those come out of the system, you're going to see a rapid dropoff in the money you need each year, so part of the challenges do you fund for the bubble but would really distort your budget numbers throughout the process, or do you look at what is your average means for the response you're carrying out, or the effect those huge bubbles in a different format -- do you look at those huge bubbles in a different format. with hurricane andrew, when we carry those huge balances, it actually created a distortions in the budget that reflected a singular event, not what the baseline budget needed to be, so you talk about weighing that against other appropriations, and use of that huge bubble. how do you account for that -- you see a huge bubble. how do you account for that? >> do you think in future years

you're not going to need this amount of money every year? >> as we move through successfully with disasters and give big construction projects, those dollars will drop down, but if you are building that into your base budget, you would get of bubble moving through, and then it would drop down as the projects are built out. unless you have activity constantly seeing these big disasters, you run the risk of, how do you sure you're going to need these dollars in such a way as you create a huge distortions that will move through the system in four or five years that may not be there when you're looking 10 or 20 years out for budget projections. >> in the fiscal year 2011 but did you have a proposal for money for potential terrorists trials in new york city very of what can you tell us about? -- in new york city. can you tell us about that? >> has grant administrator, we

would be required to administer grant to the city of new york if that comes about, but as i understand, there are other things, so i would refer back to your he moved grants were to be administered for any trial -- if ghraib were to be administered for in a trial. >> -- if grants were to be administered for in a trial. >> vice-president joe biden announced loans were being forgiven and said, do not worry, but there are a couple of places the group because people were displaced into those parishes, but they have great needs, and they may not qualify, and i did not know if there are ways to look -- at the same way you talk about greater

arbitration -- is there a way to look more holistic play and those situations and not be very legalistic about, you did not have an operating budget so you can be forgiven? >> we are going to work within the law. we try to find ways to work with the community. i think everyone would agree on what the intentions are, but we also have requirements we have to accomplish, so if the losses we cannot do something, if we cannot do so iwe're going to tae the advantage of how it and how those communities. -- how we can help those

communities. >> people are critics of fema. the thing that is different -- early on, both sides agreed to an expert, and without a dual way of going about it, getting both sides to contend? >> i looked at some projects and the -- as the administration changed and we brought in new folks. in many cases, we sat down with local officials and were able to, for the resolution quickly. we felt in many cases we got hung up with process and not out come. we would clear those up, so i would suggest as we go through this, we are really trying to separate what are our policies that may have consequences?

what does the stafford act say? in many cases, we have been able to work to get better outcomes for the applicants, and that is what we will continue to do. i have dealt with many of the frustrations in 2005, so one challenge we have with the obama administration is we brought a lot of people that have thoat expertise, and how do we improve those programs? how do we work with communities to try to work on these solutions? it is quite simple to me. our job is to make sure we get those profits on quickly, and we worked on projects in such a waiver if we provide funding -- in such a way that we provide funding carrier that is almost

as bad for many communities because we've provided funding they said was not i want to defect to the terror -- >> you talked about bringing 9-11 detainees to trial. there was a lot of controversy. are you still intending to use the for this trial? >> i am not going to make a decision about if the trials are condon, it will go vote to treasury. i am the vehicle by which if the decision is made to do anything that we require additional funding congress has provided for security, then i would do the grant under the direction

of homeland security the room -- security. the role of fema is we are the administrator for the transfers during a >> they are talking about using the $200 million elsewhere, including increasing fire fighter grants. do you see any areas that could be better used? >> i did not appropriate, so i will get a better idea of where they want to send the money, but my job would been once they tell where the money has gone is the grant programs. >> i think they are supposed to be coming up with recommendations in the next few weeks.

i did not know whether fema of's role is changing. >> i think what is changing is that the stafford act is not only thing they have very get often, state and local governments are not aware of these programs, and on the response side they've done it at the governor's request. how you build a system that brings the federal resources together? congress has told us we do temporary housing assistance but not a permanent work for housing, yet if you lose a lot of homes, who in the federal government has these programs? if you are not buying those together, you end of putting people in temporary housing solutions, but we're not looking at long-term solutions at the time.

we are going to look up evil with housing units waive half where we plan on having the enron. we have to work as a team, and the stafford act is only one tool we have to bring -- is the only tool. we have to bring a lot of it together. we are going to try different programs to help them. >> we are a little over 10 minutes left. spring is under way. what can you tell us about the spring flood season? how bad is it going to be? >> it will not be quite as the, but they did a successful flood fight, so they minimize the amount of houses flooded. we're still getting rain. many places are having more

widespread flooding. we're watching as many as three did many of the rivers have crested. we're not seeing quite the impact of last year, but the flood fight was very successful and could have prevented a lot of damage that could have occurred. >> you talk about having experienced cmo from the other end as a state administrator, -- experience fema from the other end as a state administrator, and are you able to experience what you should have, or did you realize some of those components are not ones easily remedied hama-- remedy? >> it is of rapid change. i think more than anything else, the folks actually done at the recovery office -- tony russell

handeheaded that change, and maf the changes were coming back and read in beijing and getting the work done, but overall, i think we're moving in the right direction. a lot of people say, how you change your point of view? my point of view is how we provide assistance, but fema is not part of the team. it is a shared responsibility, and a lot of times you over play the role. what is fema doing? we are on the bench. the first team is doing the hard work. they are responding, and we are here to support the team. there is going to be a primary response from the team. we would support a governor and a local team, but we are not the

primary response. in many disasters there may be no response other than providing the assistance of recovery. many people say fema must not have been five. i think that takes away from the responsibility on a lot of disasters that may not have reached the headlines, but fema did not perform to response. that is a testament of state and local officials. >> i want to ask a couple of questions of lessons learned from hurricane katrina and riga. if there was another disaster of the scale of katrina, would you still use trailers? >> we have to ask this question. if we cannot identify or bring enough housing to the population fast enough, what you do? unfortunately, you do not have too many options. i do not know what people think there's a magic solution. there is no magic solution.

what you run into is a hard decision. if you cannot bring housing or give some form of housing going quick enough, you're going to have to move people to warehousing is, and i think the tendency is if you've do not have -- if you do not have a game plan of front, you never plan on getting them home, and the local decision is very hard, because they do not want their population to leave. there are finite resources. there is only so much you can do to get housing going, and once you exceed that, you are going to have to start moving people. that became so consuming, it was difficult to think of what we need to achieve to get people back home? if we saw something where we knew we were going to have to move a lot of people for a generation, you need to start --

for a duration, you need to start planning now. you have schools, infrastructure. when you look at the stafford i've, you need to bring a lot more of the program together so we can get more people back to the communities. >> just on the question of where first responders and communicate in times of a crisis, are you confident we have inoperable communications now? >> a lot of people define it as everyone can talk to everybody. this is to pieces. it is of planning piece, and the department of moments security has been moving to this to build a good plan to support technology, but it is doable. in katrina, we set close to 6000 responders in the state of

florida. a variety of agencies. we had inoperable communications, but with our partners, we have communications going all the way back, and these are all capabilities to deal was homeland security dollars after 9-11 that were deployed literally to states over. it is doable. the technology is there. it has to be based on the inoperable plans of who is going to communicate with you at what level, and how we make sure the information moves in the direction it needs to end that technology supports that. as we move from the first generation and second generation into the next generation of communication technologies, we have to be building upon the technologies. we have seen that we have a great technology solution, but we still do not have the right people communicating in the right way. >> we have a few minutes left

with our guests. one more question. >> one of your first priorities, which sounded simple but probably is not, is to get individuals to take responsibility with families for developing emergency plans, and i did not know if you have success or can measure success of this point on something like that, or if you figured a way to communicate effectively what you're trying to do. >> i do not know, but i also know there is not any way to get where we need to go. if you look at what happened in the disasters, the people who could have and should have got ready, compete with the most vulnerable citizens, and we can come -- complete the illusion of government being ready to react, but if rapidly becomes apparent even if government is working as efficiently as possible, we cannot get to everybody fast enough, so who usually suffers?

the week, the poor, small children, the boy with disabilities, and i think this comes back to -- we have to stop looking at life of -- public as a liability of look at it as a resource. i went to haiti and some people taking care of themselves in an environment that is unbelievable, figuring out how to go charge cellphone, using inverters to keep cellphone charge. we typically look of the public as something you have to take care of, but i realize the public is good at taking care of themselves. we harvest that to take care of the most vulnerable citizens who need help. >> about $30 million was spent on grass since 9-11. -- on grants since 9-11. there is criticism there is no way to measure the effects of that. >> it has always been hard to measure. the only thing you could really come back to and say, did i said

something of that says, i am trying to change this outcome, and every time you try to come together and apply this, you get all kinds of -- is this a good measure, we are going to step back and go back to state and local officials and say, how do we quantify what we're doing other than looking at spending as a matrix of say, how much risk have we been able to address? a lot of times you're looking at building systems that you try to measure an individual component, but it does not tell you. just because it is a piece of technology does not mean i have the planning to support the. the best way is training and practicing and demonstrating capabilities, so we are coming back to look of the response for lohomeland security of this loss of the rest of the team to demonstrate what is that if you

build these capabilities and how you test against that to show we had a good investment. >> craig, we thank you for joining us today on "newsmakers." jonathan, you had asked about the white house working group on disaster recovery. what is behind that, and why was it formed? >> there is a sense that with katrina the response was not particularly good, so i think this administration prizes of on having competent people in various departments, -- prizes in itself as having competent people in various departments, so the idea was figuring out a better way to respond to move into more permanent housing solutions, and i think they're supposed to report erickson won in a broker regan >> will they report back -- report in april.

>> will they report back in april? >> it is primarily how the administration would go about working together without these kinds of artificial lines. >> you report for "the new orleans times." how would you say director fugate is seen? what is the perception of the new fema under the obama administration? >> it is much improved. it benefits greatly from being on the flip side. he is viewed with competence and experience in his field, and i think the atmosphere as a relationship between fema has become so acrimonious it was of a standstill, and they came in, brought in new people, and a good different approach, and fema is no longer was it -- what it once was in new orleans. >> how is he perceived in

capitol hill? >> he is received with a good deal of credibility. one thing that happened after hurricane katrina is congress required whoever becomes a fema administrator have experience, and he comes out in the background u. the big thing about fema and congress is the budgeting and how the money is being spent and how to account for the period there is about $30 billion across the country since 9-11, and there is no real way to measure the success of how live is being spent. he mentioned today he is going to create a new system to bring back