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Is bureaucracy fatigue incurable, treatable with smarter bureaucracy, or susceptible only to fundamental reform? The answer is yes -- partially -- to all of the above.

Students of public management have been pondering bureaucratic behavior for years, and few of the complaints of Gulf Coast communities using federal assistance for hurricane recovery would surprise them. For example, the endless approvals often required for ostensibly simple and urgent tasks are typical of what the public-choice school of economics (which concerns itself with perverse incentives and self-interested behavior in the public sector) has taken to calling the "tragedy of the anti-commons."

The classic case of the "tragedy of the commons" is overgrazing or overfishing: When too many people have unrestricted access to a common asset, they overutilize it, impoverishing all. The tragedy of the anti-commons, says Peter Leeson, an economist at West Virginia University, is the obverse: When each of many bureaucrats can veto or delay a proposal, decision-making authority is underutilized. "And this is an inherent problem with bureaucracy, where you have so many layers of decision makers, each of whom needs to sign off on a decision."

The only real solution, Leeson suggests, is to circumvent bureaucratic decision-making by privatizing as many disaster-recovery tasks as possible. "There is no way, within the framework of government, of directing the response effort and simultaneously eliminating bureaucracy," he says. "Bureaucracy is government's way of doing things properly. It disciplines their internal decision-making process. But it also stalls or slows things -- or completely stops them, in some cases."

That may be, but Michael Brown, who was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until he was fired just after Katrina, argues that the system can and should work better than it does. He is doing pro bono consulting for St. Bernard Parish, La., just east of New Orleans. "They're at a virtual standstill, which I find unconscionable," he says.

The parish government has its problems, Brown allows. "But if I had to put it on a scale, the parish is 30 percent at fault, the feds are 70 percent at fault." He says that FEMA and other government agencies should take a more vigorous and flexible approach, telling the parish, "We need you to approve X and Y and Z, and we'll waive environmental reports, get buildings up, and get you functioning as a parish again."

The FEMA director has considerable leeway under the Stafford Act -- the federal law governing disaster relief and recovery -- to bend or suspend rules that compromise public health and safety, Brown argues.

Historic preservation? "Waive it." Wrecked houses and debris piles, he says, "are unquestionably -- I would challenge anyone to argue with me -- a public health and safety hazard that needs immediate attention. At some point, you have to be reasonable here. Historic preservation is wonderful, but public safety takes priority."

Brown says that FEMA officials understandably worry that their decisions will be second-guessed by their bosses in the Homeland Security Department and by Capitol Hill. He argues that FEMA needs to regain the independence it lost in 2003, which allowed FEMA's director to go straight to the White House for permission to bend the rules, thus bypassing the bureaucracy and providing a political heat shield.

The difficulty is that disaster recovery, unlike disaster relief, stretches over months and years. A FEMA director who bends or overrides the rules not just for a few days or weeks after a hurricane but for months thereafter is likely to be hauled before angry congressional committees, denounced and sued by interest groups, and hammered in the media for playing fast and loose. A more systematic approach would rely less on improvisation and more on legal and regulatory preparedness.

The idea is to identify and ameliorate legal and regulatory bottlenecks in advance -- figuring out, says Ernest Abbott, a FEMA general counsel in the Clinton administration, "what kinds of things stop working when you have a mega-catastrophe, so that compliance with the existing law is no longer workable. I think it's critical." Abbott now operates a Washington legal practice called FEMA Law Associates.

Emily Chamlee-Wright, a Beloit College economist who is studying the Katrina recovery for George Mason University's Mercatus Center, suggests that the government could pre-position alternative regulations for extreme disasters and swing them into place on command -- say, for a year. Bureaucrats would no longer be torn between applying and circumventing inapt rules; local authorities would know what they were dealing with; and policy makers could set sensible (or at least more-sensible) priorities well in advance of a crisis.

"I think we're probably just getting started" on regulatory preparedness, Abbott says. Not started at all, would be the view from St. Bernard.

"If you say nothing else," begs Craig Taffaro, a St. Bernard Parish council member, "tell your readers about the inadequacy of the Stafford Act to deal with the issues we're facing. It is not an appropriate statute for a disaster of this magnitude. It handcuffs recovery and it forces waste. When you have to go through five layers of bureaucracy to get a tree branch removed, something is wrong."

COMMENTS

• The economist's recommendation that privitization is the "only real solution for better disaster relief and rebuliding functions" is a pathetically lame excuse for inept leadership and betrays how weak economics frequently is in handling real-world problems. First, as the article doesn't remind people, FEMA worked pretty darn well in the 1990s - without massive privatization. It handled commendably, LA Northridge Earthquake, the MidWest Floods, the Red River Flood, Hurricane Fran, etc. You replace competent leadership with a director of a horse racing group and a lawyer with no management background - and gee, everything fails. Wow, you would have thunk? Second, if you privatize a function, that contract still must be managed by federal employees - adding another layer. And now you've also added another interested party, whose corporate interests might not mesh with the government's. Third, note the complete lack of specifics in Mr. Leeson's recommendations. That's all nice in theory - but what does he know about bureaucracies reacting in a crisis situation? The 1990s again are littered with failures of the privatization model - the former Soviet Union, Latin America, etc. Fourth, note the slippery wording, "the only real solution". Really, the only real solution? Well please give an example of where that's worked in disaster response. And pray tell - wouldn't appointing competent disaster managers to run the disaster agency be a "real solution". Full quote: "The only real solution, Leeson suggests, is to circumvent bureaucratic decision-making by privatizing as many disaster-recovery tasks as possible. "There is no way, within the framework of government, of directing the response effort and simultaneously eliminating bureaucracy," he says. "Bureaucracy is government's way of doing things properly. It disciplines their internal decision-making process. But it also stalls or slows things -- or completely stops them, in some cases." Please excuse my rudeness in the above paragraphs, but economists too often just assume that they know better, and that all their assumptions are true. So we get dumb recommendations that real people pay for. Samuel Knight Posted August 28, 2006 9:42 AM
• Interesting theory but not true. Yes, there is an incredible bureaucratic nightmare in the federal government. But shifting this to the private sector doesn't solve the problem because every private sector company I know of has their own hierarchies as well-- and the government isn't giving up its lever of control so the bureacracy gets only worse and more complicated. The solution was evident by the Coast Guard response-- even if the hierarchy tried its best to stop it. The Guard and the Navy violated orders and protocol and saved 30,000 people. If you give people the tools and you take away the red-tape and reward people for their innovation and going beyond expectations you can achieve great results. If you slam people by disciplining them for achieving results outside protocol the lesson you teach is the opposite. In HR space we are just completely wrapped up in so much red tape that when OPM allows for creativity and innovation, most are too timid to get out of the box-- it is the same whether you are in private companies or in the public sector-- Going against the heirarchy is never easy. HR Specialist GovExec.com reader Posted August 28, 2006 7:50 AM