Homeland Security could face transition problem

[maddezmom]

As they looked around the room, they realized they hadn't fully considered who would replace them. Who, they wondered, would keep the department running while President-elect Kerry picked a new leadership team? What career officials, whose posts are designed to outlast any one administration, would step in to ensure that planes flew safely, that borders were patrolled, that the government could respond swiftly to a natural disaster? No one could say for sure, because DHS had no plan.

"All the politicals thought we were out," says Stewart Verdery, then the department's assistant secretary for policy and planning for border and transportation security. Verdery was an energetic and experienced Capitol Hill staffer who had come to Homeland Security after a stint as senior legislative adviser to Vivendi Universal, the media conglomerate. But DHS was uncharted territory. "There was a definite sense that the transition was going to be rocky," he recalls.

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As of June 2, there are 597 days until the next presidential inauguration, on January 20, 2009. As the Bush administration's days wind down, the government's level of vulnerability -- and the nation's risk level -- increase, and they will stay high until the next president gets on his or her feet. This is true in any transition. "The first year and a half of a new administration is really the most vulnerable in terms of political leadership," says Paul Light, a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.

January 2009 has current and former officials particularly worried, because it marks the first time since 9/11 that the reins of national and domestic security will be handed off to a completely new team. At the Pentagon, this changeover doesn't matter as much. It has an entire joint staff of senior military officers who oversee worldwide operations, as well as regional military commands whose senior leadership stays in place. The Homeland Security Department, however, is another story. It is still run almost entirely by political appointees and stands to be the most weakened during the transition.

"Any of the other main Cabinet departments have civil servants that step in" as acting officials during a transition, says Stephen Flynn, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a leading expert on the department and its history. "Homeland Security doesn't have any of those.... And that's extremely unusual."

more:http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=37094&dcn=todaysnews

[eppur_se_muova]

1. That's because DHS was only meant to be filled with cronies.

Civil servants with actual competence and skills need not apply.