WASHINGTON: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has moved to address staffing issues that triggered concern and uncertainty among and about its workforce, including reinstating employees put on leave for publicly opposing agency policies, and extending contracts for some workers whose terms were set to expire soon.<\/p>\n
Fourteen FEMA employees who signed a public letter of dissent last August sounding alarms about the nation\u2019s disaster preparedness were reinstated after being put on paid administrative leave for eight months, according to two FEMA staff members.<\/p>\n
They were among over 190 current and former FEMA employees who signed the letter but were the only active employees who included their names. The letter, known as the \u201cKatrina Declaration,\u201d called out multiple policy decisions by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration that the signatories said risked a catastrophe like the one seen after Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel pretty vindicated, and like we did the right thing,\u201d said Abby McIlraith, a FEMA emergency management specialist who is among the reinstated workers. The group received emails Wednesday informing them that an investigation into that matter was closed and instructing them to return to work Thursday, she said. Their reinstatement was first reported by NBC News.<\/p>\n
FEMA leadership also told some employees this week that it will be extending certain term-limited employees\u2019 contracts, according to documents seen by The Associated Press, after extended uncertainty over the future of those positions.<\/p>\n
The decisions are the latest indications that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is moving away from the harsher approach toward FEMA taken by his predecessor, Kristi Noem, before she was fired as DHS leader.<\/p>\n
Mullin quickly reversed Noem\u2019s policy that her office approve any DHS expenditure over $100,000 and has released more than $1 billion in backlogged FEMA grants and reimbursements to states, tribes and territories since being sworn in last month.<\/p>\n
A FEMA spokesperson told The Associated Press that while it does not comment on specific personnel actions, the agency is taking \u201ctargeted steps to stabilize our workforce and strengthen readiness\u201d as it prepares for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season and the FIFA World Cup, both beginning in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder new leadership, FEMA is addressing outstanding personnel actions to ensure workforce stability and a strong, deployable surge force for upcoming national events and potential disasters,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has moved to address staffing issues that triggered concern and uncertainty among and about its workforce, including reinstating employees put on leave for publicly opposing agency policies, and extending contracts for some workers whose terms were set to expire soon. Fourteen FEMA employees who signed a public letter of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97104,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97090\/revisions\/97104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}