The government is reopening federal contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars handed out with little or no competition in the relief and reconstruction efforts following Hurricane Katrina, Acting FEMA Director R. David Paulison told a congressional committee Thursday.
“All of those no-bid contracts, we are going to go back and rebid. We’re in the process of rebidding them already,” Paulison said in his first public testimony since succeeding Michael Brown as FEMA chief three weeks ago.
Paulison’s announcement came as senators warned him that the agency must move quickly to rebuild the public’s confidence after its much-criticized initial response to the hurricane.
Paulison distanced himself from decisions made by his predecessor, and pledged FEMA’s cooperation with congressional investigators who are probing the agency’s handling of one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
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He made two appearances on Capitol Hill as half a dozen congressional committees held hearings on the hurricane and lawmakers wrangled over what role the federal government should play in the recovery and how it should pay the multibillion-dollar costs.
“I’ve been a public servant for a long time, and I’ve never been a fan of no-bid contracts,” Paulison told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The panel is responsible for oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA, and for the Senate’s investigation into the government’s response to the hurricane.
After the hearing, Paulison told reporters that he had no total figure for how many contracts had been awarded with little or no bidding. But he said four agreements at $100 million each for construction and housing were included.
The contracts up for rebidding were awarded to four giant firms–Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La., Fluor Corp. of Aliso Viejo, Calif., Bechtel National of San Francisco and CH2M Hill of Denver–specializing in construction, engineering and consulting, a FEMA spokeswoman, told The New York Times. The businesses have long records of work for the federal government, and some have executives or lobbyists with close ties to the Bush administration.
Senators pressed Paulison to describe how FEMA was addressing problems that continue to slow the delivery of vital services, including housing, to hurricane survivors. They expressed concern about the agency’s failure to reunite some families separated by the storm, its inability to provide one-stop service to storm victims, and reports that it has overpaid for some services and supplies.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the panel, told Paulison that FEMA should have stockpiled supplies before the storm hit through contracts that “would have been, presumably, at more competitive prices.”
Paulison also faced criticism for the agency’s decision to rent cruise ships to house recovery workers and some of those left homeless by the hurricane. “We know that people need to be housed, but you spent a quarter of a billion dollars on cruise ships,” said Sen. Norman Coleman (R-Minn.).
Paulison defended the use of the ships, saying they are an important piece of FEMA’s effort to house between 400,000 and 600,000 people. The cruise ships, he said, are “almost completely full,” housing mostly federal workers.
It was a day of mounting anger on Capitol Hill, as senators from both parties gave vent to their frustrations over the Bush administration’s relief efforts.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), usually a strong administration supporter, lashed out at the White House for refusing to support his bill to have the federal government pick up all the Medicaid costs of impoverished Katrina victims for five months after the day the hurricane hit land.
“I resent that, considering how much I’ve delivered for the White House over the years,” Grassley told Treasury Secretary John Snow at a Finance Committee hearing.