The Politics of Presidential Disaster Declarations Case Studies of Disasters in Louisiana: Severe Storms and Flooding of March 11--12, 2012 and January 8--17, 2013.

摘要

The importance of gubernatorial discretion in managing major disasters cannot be overstated. The role of the state governor, as the state government's chief elected official, is central to effective disaster response and recovery operations. More importantly, the latitude of discretion afforded to the governor in requesting presidential disaster declarations is far reaching; affecting the political and fiscal environments at all levels of government. The purpose of this research was to identify the factors contributing to the proliferation of presidential disaster declaration requests during the last decade. The factors identified during this research were 1. severity of disaster, 2. media influence, 3. fiscal challenges, 4. local and state government's level of disaster preparedness, and 5. state governments internal political environment.;In achieving this end, this research provided a conceptual model for understanding how the above factors influenced gubernatorial discretion in requesting presidential disaster declarations. This research determined that the latitude of "discretion" afforded to the state governor and U.S. President in the Stafford Act is contributing to the transformation of federal disaster relief from a discretionary program into an entitlement program. This finding is contrary to the vast majority of research on this subject, most of which assigns responsibility for this "transformation" to FEMA's criteria for determining eligibility for federal disaster declarations.;This investigation focused on the State of Louisiana as a case study, specifically examining two different disasters in 2012 and 2013. One disaster was denied a presidential disaster declaration and the other approved (declared). The major disaster that was denied a presidential declaration was the Severe Storms and Flooding that affected Louisiana on March 11--12, 2012. The declared disaster was the Severe Storms and Flooding disaster that occurred on January 8--17, 2013.;These major disasters represented sufficient cases for studying the influences and impacts of gubernatorial discretion in the disaster management decisional environment and presidential disaster declaration process. This investigation was important for addressing concerns of the United States Congress regarding the proliferation of disaster declaration requests and declared disasters since 2005. This study is equally important to the emerging field of disaster management from public policy, public administration, and other relevant social sciences disciplines.;Keywords: discretion, decision-making, disaster declarations, politics, public administration .