FEMA abandons target date for full staffing

[The Straight Story]

FEMA abandons target date for full staffing

By Jonathan Marino
[e-mail]
The Federal Emergency Management Agency again has backed away from deadlines to fill staff vacancies and no longer is offering a timeline for when it will be working at full capacity.

In a briefing Friday with reporters, FEMA Director R. David Paulison said the agency has hired about 85 percent of the workers it needs. This is the same percentage he offered when asked by a reporter May 23 about progress toward a goal of reaching 95 percent of capacity before June 1, when the hurricane season began.

Initially, the agency set a mid-May deadline for meeting that goal. Paulison pushed that date back to June 1, and the agency further delayed it to July, according to a FEMA fact sheet given to reporters last month.

But when pressed Friday for comment on when the agency would finish hiring, Paulison said he did not know and could not provide a date.

He took responsibility for the failure to meet hiring goals, despite only recently being confirmed as the agency's director. He said FEMA has met some goals of bringing in more senior workers, but that some of those hires came internally, which does not solve the problem of adding needed staffers.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=34347&dcn=todaysnews

[Olney Blue]

1. Oh? The House must have passed a resolution for no target date.