Hurricane Irene dodged east and blew us a kiss but didnt deliver a roundhouse punch. Those who live in the Carolinas, Virginia, the Middle Atlantic states and New England may not be so lucky. The fundamental point of having a government is to protect the health and safety of its citizens as well as the institutions for which they work.
Even in the face of what could be a Category 3 or 4 Hurricane Irene (those are storms that can do some serious damage to people, their homes and their workplaces), some politicians - especially, one notes with wonder, those whose states are in the direct path of the storm - are demanding that no emergency funds be expended unless budget cuts are made elsewhere. There are moments in history at which health and safety ought to be more important than scoring ideological and political points. JL
James Nash reports in Bloomberg:
Hurricane Irene, which became a Category 3 storm today, is threatening East Coast states from North Carolina to New England where budget cuts have diminished funding for responding to emergencies.
Around the U.S., 24 states reduced financing for emergency responses from 2009 to 2010. The trend is likely to continue, according to the National Emergency Management Association
as they deal with fiscal 2012 fiscal deficits estimated at $103 billion by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.
Emergency management agencies “have been impacted by state budget cuts for the past consecutive three years,” Trina R. Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association, said in an e-mail today from Lexington, Kentucky.
“Agencies have been forced to cut staff positions, institute furloughs and hiring freezes despite the fact that most are already understaffed,” Sheets said. She said the association anticipates federal budget cuts in fiscal 2012 will diminish homeland-security funding for states and municipalities.
Still, state and federal officials can marshal resources quickly, said Scott D. Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. Maryland reduced its latest emergency-management budget less than 1 percent, according to budget documents. North Carolina, which began evacuating visitors from Ocracoke Island following forecasts that the hurricane may make landfall this weekend, also cut funding for its emergency agency less than 1 percent in the current fiscal year.
Aggressive Response
“Regardless of what’s in the budget for this kind of incident, I believe, quite frankly, the General Assembly would very aggressively come and help us do whatever we had to do to rebuild their lives,” Governor Beverly Perdue told reporters yesterday in Raleigh.
Perdue, a Democrat, said she won’t know how budget cuts will affect recovery efforts until after the storm. Hurricane Floyd caused more than $1 billion in damage in 1999, forcing the state “to go to Washington to beg for money,” she said.
Total losses from Irene may reach $3.1 billion across the Caribbean and along the U.S. coastline, according to estimates from Kinetic Analysis Corp., a risk-modeling firm in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The U.S. subsidizes states’ emergency-response budgets, particularly in times of disaster. Of Florida’s $765 million Division of Emergency Management budget for 2008-09, more than 81 percent came from federal and state funds as a result of declared disasters, according to a division report. Parts of the Florida Panhandle experienced tornadoes and rip currents when Hurricane Gustav struck in September 2008.
‘Very Lucky’
Funding for Florida’s Division of Emergency Management fell almost 40 percent, to $278.8 million, in fiscal 2012 from the year before, as projects to recover from earlier storms ended, said William Booher, a spokesman. The state hasn’t been hit by a major storm since 2005, when Hurricanes Wilma, Katrina, Rita and Dennis struck. The budget for day-to-day operations hasn’t fallen, even as Florida closed a $3.8 billion budget gap, he said.
North Carolina typically has “rainy day” budget funds to respond to natural disasters, said Julia Jarema, a spokeswoman for the state’s Division of Emergency Management.
“Obviously those are not as flush as they once were, but we will handle it,” Jarema said in a telephone interview from Raleigh. “We have the people and resources needed to respond.”
Stocked Warehouses
The state has two warehouses stocked with food, tarpaulins, cots, sandbags, sandbagging machines and other supplies and is checking inventories in advance of the storm, Jarema said. One warehouse is in Tarboro in the eastern part of the state and the other is in Badin east of Charlotte, she said.
In New Jersey, where Irene may hit on Sunday, State Police officials plan to shift officers to coastal areas and activate the emergency operations center in Ewing, spokesman Brian Polite said. He declined to say whether budget cuts have hampered the agency’s ability to respond to natural disasters.
Governor Chris Christie’s budget for the fiscal year that began in July assumed $11.6 million in savings from attrition within the force. A new trooper class was canceled in the previous 12 months to contain costs.
“One thing we don’t discuss is budgetary issues and how they affect our responses to situations,” Polite said in an interview.
Standard Approach
Officials generally don’t consider costs as they prepare for a hurricane or respond to a natural disaster, said Meagan Dorsch, spokeswoman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“The standard approach for any state is to first assess the situation following a major disaster, respond to the need, and make any necessary budgetary changes,” she said by e-mail from Denver. “This is what we have seen in places like Alabama and Missouri following their devastating tornadoes this spring.”
The American Red Cross is in “very good shape” to aid victims of Irene and the 70,000 other incidents --ranging from house fires to tornado outbreaks -- to which it responds each year, said spokeswoman Laura Howe. The Washington-based nonprofit organization and its chapters reported $3.6 billion in revenue in 2009, according to its federal tax filing, the most recent available.
“There’s a whole mechanism that springs into action immediately when there’s a disaster,” Pattison of the budget officers’ association said in a telephone interview.
“They’re going to do what they have to do,” he said. “Nobody’s going to say we can’t staff up or spend money due to budgets. They may have to cut other places over time.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment