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As part of that expanded oversight, FEMA is sending some 30 auditors to the Gulf to follow the money. Not to be outdone, Congress has its own team of 24 investigators hot on the FEMA auditors' heels. But unless the President appoints an independent czar to oversee the entire reconstruction operation, Democrats and Republicans alike fear it may be as poorly managed as the initial response to the storm. FEMA's track record before Katrina isn't too encouraging: during last year's $2 billion cleanup of Hurricane Frances, millions of relief dollars ended up in the hands of residents in the largely unaffected area around Miami.
So even after last week's resignation of FEMA director Michael Brown, it may be a long time before the agency stops being politicians' favorite punching bag. No wonder the challenge of spending all that money seems to hold no joy for those grinding away at FEMA's National Response Coordination Center located in a sad annex behind a southwest Washington Holiday Inn. "The size of it is daunting. The speed with which it needs to be delivered is very difficult," says Bob Spaulding, project manager for Fluor Corp., one of the companies awarded $100 million to help provide temporary housing to nearly 1 million people in the region. To help quicken the pace of rebuilding, the government has relaxed some of its normal rules, guaranteeing contractors a certain profit regardless of what they spend, allowing many contracts to be signed without competitive bidding, and raising the amount federal employees can put on their credit cards without getting special approval, from $25,000 to $250,000.
But cutting corners doesn't necessarily make things run faster. In many parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, frustration is building over the slow recovery. Relatively few of the promised federal help centers to coordinate assistance have been opened, while some local officials have struggled to get contracts for cleanup projects approved in Washington. Numerous victims of Hurricane Katrina have had trouble applying for assistance, whether online or on the telephone, though bandwidth and staffing have been greatly increased in recent days. One of three Carnival Cruise Lines ships that was chartered to house thousands of relief workers and possibly evacuees for at least six months, at a cost of around $220 million, was still docked in Mobile, Ala., most of last week and empty, as Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana jockeyed for the vessel. More ominously, in the wake of the horrifying discovery of 34 bodies at a Louisiana nursing home and an additional 45 at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center, a very public dispute about the slow pace of gathering bodies in New Orleans erupted between FEMA and Kathleen Blanco, the Governor of Louisiana. Claiming that it needed better coordination with local authorities to get the job done, Houston-based Kenyon International Emergency Services canceled its temporary contract with FEMA and signed on with the state instead. By the end of the week, the official death toll from Katrina had risen above 800.