Bureaucracy Kills

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

A story posted yesterday at CNN.com provides a disgusting snapshot of how bureaucratic red tape and fears of legal liability actively thwarted volunteers' attempts to assist the relief efforts in New Orleans:

Doctors eager to help sick and injured evacuees were handed mops by federal officials who expressed concern about legal liability.  Even as violence and looting slowed rescues, police from other states were turned back while officials squabbled over who should take charge of restoring the peace. Warehouses in New Orleans burned while firefighters were diverted to Atlanta for Federal Emergency Management Agency training sessions on community relations and sexual harassment.  Water trucks languished for days at FEMA's staging area because the drivers lacked the proper paperwork.

The story provides concrete and compelling examples of how this occurred.  It is sad, to say the least, that in the wake of the worst natural disaster in this country's history, an adherence to process over results coupled with the defensive fears and refusal to take responsibility that typify government bureaucracy prevented those who were willing and able to provide assistance from doing so.  As Philip K. Howard painstakingly details in The Death of Common Sense, American bureaucracy so rigidly focuses on process that human judgment and responsibility have fallen by the wayside.  The fact that volunteers whose help was clearly needed were turned away is a tragic example of this which is best summarized in an anecdote in the CNN.com article linked to above:

FEMA halted tractor trailers hauling water to a supply staging area in Alexandria, Louisiana[.]  The New York Times quoted William Vines, former mayor of Fort Smith, Arkansas, as saying, "FEMA would not let the trucks unload. . . .  The drivers were stuck for several days on the side of the road" because, he said, they did not have a "tasker number."  He added, "What in the world is a tasker number?  I have no idea.  It's just paperwork and it's ridiculous."

Paperwork should not take precedence over helping those in need in a time of crisis.  And just as we should trim our bureaucracy to allow a more effective disaster response, so too should we make sure that law enforcement officers charged with protecting us from terrorists are not shackled by red tape.

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