Creating Cabinet agency no panacea for agencies' woes, critics say

Reorganizing several government agencies into a Department of Homeland Security will not solve the communications and personnel problems that plague agencies involved in homeland defense, labor union officials and other observers said Thursday.

The Bush administration's proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security is "basically just reshuffling the boxes, and not tackling the real problem, which is a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies at all levels and the intelligence community," said T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which is part of the American Federation of Government Employees.

The plan would weaken morale among Border Patrol agents who are already insecure about an impending reorganization at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Bonner said. And the proposal could create chaos with personnel systems, if different pay scales and compensation packages at different organizations are merged, Bonner said. Pay and benefits vary among immigration inspectors, Customs inspectors, Border Patrol agents, and Coast Guard employees, for example.

According to Bush administration briefing documents obtained by Government Executive, seven agencies would be shifted into the proposed new Homeland Security Department in their entirety. They are the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the Coast Guard; the Transportation Security Administration; the Customs Service; the Immigration and Naturalization Service (including the Border Patrol); the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (now part of the Agriculture Department); and the Secret Service.

Local law enforcement officials are more likely than federal officials to identify suspicious people who may be terrorists, Bonner said. "All of these people [at every level of law enforcement] need access to timely, up-to-date information, and that's not proposed here." The administration proposal includes an information analysis and infrastructure protection component that would get information from the FBI and the CIA and provide a central point for the analysis of terrorist threats.

A former government leader agreed that simply reorganizing agencies does not ensure that the right information is going to the right people at the right time. "Reorganization by itself still does not obviate the need for better information sharing, and [for] an intelligent strategy for integrating and using this information," said Randall Yim, managing director of national preparedness at the General Accounting Office and a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration. Yim emphasized that more details on the administration's proposal are needed to better assess its merits.

Creating the Homeland Security Department will not solve agencies' staffing or funding problems, said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents thousands of Customs agents. According to Kelley, employees at the Customs Service have been working 12- and 16-hour shifts since Sept. 11.

"The agencies that are involved in the homeland security issues need staffing," Kelley said. "Putting them all in one place with no additional staffing or resources is not going to solve the problem."

The administration and Congress must also figure out what happens to the nonhomeland security-related missions of the affected agencies, according to Donald Kettl, a public administration scholar at the University of Wisconsin. For example, FEMA responds to hurricanes and tornadoes, while the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service last year focused on keeping foot-and-mouth disease out of the country. Such missions still need to be carried out, Kettl said.

James Lee Witt, former director of FEMA under President Clinton, praised the concept of a homeland security department, but said he would be "leery" of putting all of FEMA under the new organization, "simply because you have so many different programs under FEMA."

"I'm afraid an organization that large would take away from FEMA being responsive to the American people in some way," Witt said.

The proposal to merge agencies with homeland security duties under one roof has received support from lawmakers, including Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who sponsored legislation after Sept. 11 to create such an agency.

George Cahlink, Brian Friel and Katherine McIntire Peters contributed to this story.