Jindal panel urged to bolster local emergency agencies
by Bill Barrow - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

BATON ROUGE -- Gov.-elect Bobby Jindal's emergency preparedness priorities should be an overhaul of the federal Stafford Act and investing more in personnel, communications equipment and training for local agencies, several officials testified Thursday during a transition committee meeting.

The advice, based on experiences during and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, came from a parish sheriff, a fire chief, a local homeland security director and the top lobbyists for Louisiana's municipal and parish governments.

"The parishes are still experiencing shortfalls when it comes to emergency management functions," said Sandy Davis, director of the Caddo-Bossier Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Tom Ed McHugh, executive director of the Louisiana Municipal Association and a former Baton Rouge mayor, said Jindal, still a U.S. congressman, should pressure the players on Capitol Hill to rewrite the Stafford Act, which governs federal disaster response. The act has been widely criticized as saddling interaction between federal and local governments with red tape, slowing the flow of federal money to reimburse local expenses and to pay for rebuilding projects.

"Many of the fire departments around the state have not received reimbursement for their work responding after Katrina," Carlyss Fire Department Chief Jude Savoie told the panel.

Despite the complaints, congressional leaders have shown little if any real interest in revisiting the act.

"There's nobody better to champion a change than the new governor," McHugh said.