Yes: It HAS frozen over:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FEMA chief Michael Brown is no longer on the agency’s payroll, the Homeland Security Department said Wednesday, ending nearly two months of compensation after he resigned under fire.
Brown stepped down as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on September 12 in the wake of the government’s sluggish reaction to Hurricane Katrina and questions about his own disaster response experience.
Well, he had a lot of experience with horses and that’s no reason to say “nay” about him. MORE:
He remained on the FEMA payroll until November 2, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.
Initially, Brown was permitted to continue collecting his $148,000 annual salary for 30 days after he resigned.
Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he extended Brown’s contract for an additional 30 days, until mid-November, to help the agency complete its review of the response to Katrina.
Which makes sense: have him review the response of the agency he headed and vociferously defended in Congress, causing jaws to drop not only among Democrats but Republicans.
When Brown testified, bipartisan jaws dropped lower than in the Oval Office under Bill Clinton. MORE:
But Brown ended his contract early, said Knocke, responding to an inquiry about House Democratic demands to remove Brown from the payroll.
In a letter to President Bush on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Brown’s contract was “inexplicable and a gross waste of taxpayer dollars.”
“It is difficult to imagine anyone less qualified to assess FEMA’s failed response to Katrina and make recommendations for improving the agency,” they wrote.
Brown had said in an earlier interview about his extended work that he was “motivated to wrap it up.”
So was the American public and most of Congress. AND:
After he resigned, Brown had no decision-making or management responsibilities at FEMA. Chertoff had defended keeping Brown on for an extended period.
“It’s important to allow the new people who have the responsibility … to have access to the information we need to do better,” Chertoff said. “We don’t want to sacrifice the real ability to get a full picture of Mike’s experiences…We don’t want to sacrifice that ability simply in order to make an image point.”
Brown’s exit ends a case that will be written and talked about for many years — and that ain’t hay. You also have to wonder if he would have stayed on his advisory capacity a bit longer if those emails of his hadn’t surfaced that had to have been humiliating for administration and Homeland Security officials . The emails portrayed someone who seemed inordinately concerned with his image as the horrors unfolded and people were drowing — not the self-portrayal he gave to Congress — which few seemed to believe anyway.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.