FEMA and Fraud

The Government Accountability Office reported yesterday that FEMA failed to apply even limited internal controls to its distribution of emergency aid after the Gulf Coast hurricanes, leading to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.

I was all set to cut FEMA a lot of slack on this. The agency's case, on the surface, is fairly compelling. The victim must come first, agency officials say, and we'll tolerate a certain amount of abuse in the interest of getting money to deserving people as quickly as possible. Makes sense to me, because let's face it: Getting money to disaster victims quickly is simply inconsistent with a fully robust set of internal controls that would prevent any instance of abuse.

But there are two problems:

• GAO's undercover investigators were able to obtain fraudulent benefits in October, months after the hurricanes hit.
• GAO reported that FEMA in fact had limited controls in place to prevent fraud in its expedited assistance program, but simply failed to apply them in many cases.

That leaves FEMA with very little wiggle room, and much to answer for.

UPDATE: A sharp-eyed reader notes that the GAO investigators weren't getting fraudulent benefits "months" after all of the hurricanes. I should've said "weeks."