Mineta defends department's performance during Katrina

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta Thursday blamed the Federal Emergency Management Agency for holding up his department's efforts to move individuals out of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

Mineta said his department had rounded up hundreds of privately operated buses at FEMA's request and brought them to a designated highway stop near New Orleans. There they sat, because FEMA did not give them orders to move, Mineta told a House Appropriations subcommittee.

Mineta also said his department had secured a train with enough cars to transport 600 passengers and brought it as close as possible to New Orleans after the storm, but that FEMA delivered only 90 passengers.

"They must not have known there were people at the [New Orleans] convention center," Mineta said.

House Transportation-Treasury Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Knollenberg, R- Mich., asked Mineta to assess how well FEMA performed during the disaster. "Not well," said Mineta, after a long a pause.

Members of the subcommittee also questioned Mineta about DOT's plans for making sure that money appropriated by Congress is well spent.

Appropriations ranking member David Obey, D-Wis., pressed Mineta to estimate how much it will cost to rebuild roads, bridges and airports in the affected area. Mineta said there was almost no way to tell, but that he was "working on this very carefully." He offered what he termed a "wild ... guess" of between $1.5 billion to $2 billion to rebuild Louisiana highways, bridges and the New Orleans airport.

A bill that passed the Senate this week and is headed to the House would allow DOT to spend airport improvement money on rebuilding. Currently, airport improvement funds under the department's control are used only for runways and taxiways, not hangars or airport terminals. The bill would waive that requirement, allowing the money already in the DOT budget for airports to be used for disaster rebuilding.

Democrats on the panel, particularly Obey and Rep. John Olver, D-Mass., questioned whether waiving certain government regulations like the Davis-Bacon Act is resulting in no-bid contracts going to government cronies instead of local companies and whether competitive wages are being paid.

Olver cited a recent published report that less than 10 percent of the rebuilding contracts given out so far have gone to local contractors. He called that unacceptable.

But Rep. Anne Northup, R-Ky., suggested that local contractors may not be able to handle the work. "They have had equipment destroyed and workers move away," she said. "I don't know that I'd want to give it to a local company if I'm a small business waiting for a road to get to me."