For Hurricane Victims, a Flawed System - New York Times - 4/21/2006

[Coastie for Truth]

The federal government's main program for helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina rebuild their homes and businesses, operated by the Small Business Administration, has been plagued by inadequate leadership and poor planning, federal investigators have told Congress.

The Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, has found that the agency was hampered in its hurricane response by its failure to participate in disaster drills and to prepare for a disaster of the hurricane's magnitude, according to written testimony and briefings it has given Congressional committees.

Rather than anticipating challenges and problems, "S.B.A. was close to being in a purely reactive state," William Shear, a Government Accountability Office analyst, said in an interview about his office's preliminary findings. "They didn't have in place mechanisms to address what you would do under different scenarios. No one was in a planning position."

The agency, which makes low-cost loans to disaster victims for long-term recovery efforts, has said repeatedly that it did as good a job as possible given the scope of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

The accountability office is not expected to release its full reports on the Small Business Administration until later this year, and the S.B.A will wait until the reports are complete to comment on them, said Anne Marie Frawley, a spokeswoman for the agency.

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