Sen. Richard Shelby has apparently discovered why Calhoun County has not received the $41 million the Army promised to provide last October to protect the community from the risks associated with the depot’s chemical weapons stockpile.But The Star has yet to let its readers in on the story.
On Feb. 22, FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh appeared before the Senate VA/HUD Appropriations Subcommittee. Sen. Shelby used this opportunity to ask the director about the $6 million the Army promised Calhoun County for a vital software upgrade to the EMIS software system. (The money has since been released). Our local EMA needs this upgrade to be able to warn and notify local residents quickly in the event of a chemical accident at AAD. Unfortunately, the transfer of this $6 million has been held up, as Sen. Shelby put it, by a “certain individual” at FEMA.
Sen. Shelby explained to Director Allbaugh that for many years FEMA has attempted to get Calhoun County to select a competing software system known as FEMIS, even though the Army had already rejected the system as too unreliable for on-post use. The senator reminded Director Allbaugh that when the FEMIS system was tested in Alabama two years ago it caused the entire statewide emergency network to crash.
The good senator then pointed out that this “certain individual” who had been blocking the transfer of the $6 million had just announced his plans to leave FEMA to take a job with the company that developed and is attempting to sell the inferior FEMIS software to Calhoun County. Sen. Shelby noted that “apparently this new job had been in the works for quite some time” and declared all of this to be “a serious conflict of interest.” In response, Director Allbaugh said he had recently become aware of this abuse of the public trust and had already taken action to “hasten the departure of this individual” from FEMA.
Unfortunately, The Star didn’t report this important revelation (even though The Star had a reporter at the hearing).
On March 6, at a hearing of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Sen. Shelby returned to the software funding issue by asking the Secretary of the Army about “this certain individual’s” counterpart at the Pentagon.
Eight years ago his counterpart accepted an unsolicited proposal to build the FEMIS system. According to the senator his counterpart then went to work for the organization which developed and is attempting to sell FEMIS. The senator pointed out that more than $40 million of taxpayers money has been wasted in this FEMIS debacle. Finally, Sen. Shelby disclosed that the counterpart is now back at the Pentagon working hard to stop the software upgrade and prevent the transfer of the $6 million to Calhoun County.
Once again, Sen. Shelby said he was outraged by this obvious conflict of interest, and once again The Star did not report this exchange.
(The Birmingham News also covered the hearing and reported these events to its readers.)
Why is it that our own hometown newspaper which seemingly champions the FEMA funding issue on its editorial pages has chosen to keep this news story to itself? Perhaps it has concluded that its other well-known position in favor of proceeding with immediate incineration justifies the censorship of news which might expose the many glaring deficiencies of the weapons destruction and community preparedness programs.
David C. Christian
Anniston
