Is this typical or what?
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National Hurricane Center head says forecasters are scanted amid 'bogus' spending
Martin Merzer, McClatchy Newspapers
MIAMI - The new director of the National Hurricane Center escalated his criticism of superiors in the federal government Wednesday, charging they are squandering millions on counterproductive image-building campaigns while front-line forecasters wrestle with budget shortfalls.
Bill Proenza, who took the hurricane center post in January, said top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are spending $4 million on a "bogus" 200-year NOAA anniversary celebration.
That celebration is part of a broader campaign to publicize NOAA and its leaders, Proenza and other critics said, while diminishing the identity of its best known components, the National Weather Service and the hurricane center.
Meanwhile, Proenza said, NOAA has cut $700,000 from a crucial hurricane research program and allowed inflation to erode the hurricane center's budget, and it wants to spend more money to change the widely recognized center's name to the "NOAA Hurricane Center."
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he and former hurricane center director Max Mayfield said, NOAA even ordered them to replace the National Weather Service logo with a NOAA logo on official tracking maps. They refused.
"It's getting to the point where I cannot tolerate this," Proenza told The Miami Herald after he was asked about critical comments from emergency managers about NOAA's budget priorities and its public relations campaigns.
The statements from him and other high-ranking officials suggest that potentially disruptive battles are under way in the sprawling NOAA bureaucracy that Americans depend on for crucial information about hurricanes and other natural phenomena.
NOAA officials in Washington rejected the criticisms, saying the anniversary campaign is costing $1.5 million over two years and helps explain their mission to the public.
Anson Franklin, NOAA's director of communications, also said the agency has no intention of destroying the National Weather Service, though it does intend to bring it, the hurricane center and similar agencies more firmly under the NOAA "corporate identity."
"I can assure you we are not going to throw the baby out with the bath water," Franklin said. "The National Weather Service is probably one of the best recognized organizations in the country. Everybody uses it.
"I don't think we will do anything that would really take away from that," Franklin said. "But we think that the people who use the weather service should know and understand that it is a part of NOAA."
The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, which is part of the U.S. Commerce Department.
The six-month hurricane season begins June 1, and scientists say it is likely to be unusually active.
NOAA or Noah?
Craig Fugate, Florida's director of emergency management, said details shared by NOAA employees concern him.
"It's all about petty jealousies," Fugate said. "People don't know who NOAA is -- they think he's the guy who built the ark.
"So, if I'm NOAA, particularly the administrators, and no one will play with me," Fugate said, "I want to get the popular kid and rename him with my name."
R. David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, urged NOAA to "not make a rash decision."
"The National Weather Service brand has been around a long time, and people depend on that," Paulison said. "I would hope that they would consider very carefully before taking the brand name away."
NOAA documents obtained by The Miami Herald confirm officials have been floating the idea of changing the name of the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade to the NOAA Hurricane Center.
In addition, NOAA has proposed changing the National Weather Service to the NOAA Weather Service, the National Ocean Service to the NOAA Ocean Service and so on.
Other documents and an obscure NOAA Web site -- www.weather.gov/banners/nws.php -- indicate NOAA wants to use its logo in place of the National Weather Service logo atop virtually all federal weather-related Web sites.
The effort to de-emphasize the weather service's identity has been in the works for a while, Proenza and others said, and intensified just after Katrina ripped through New Orleans and the upper Gulf Coast in 2005.
As forecasters struggled to cope with the storm and its aftermath, NOAA headquarters ordered them to remove the weather service's logo from tracking maps that were being viewed by millions of people.
Mayfield, then in charge of the hurricane center, and Proenza, then in charge of the weather service's southern district, which includes the stricken Gulf Coast areas, refused to comply.
"Our people still had no power and no days off," said Mayfield, who retired in January and now works for WPLG. "I pushed back and said I wasn't going to do that. That was one battle I felt I had won."
But those efforts are under way again, Proenza said, and will gain momentum if NOAA diminishes or eradicates the weather service's presence on the Internet.
At the same time, NOAA is engaging in a 200-year anniversary celebration, even though the agency has been in existence only since 1970.
A troubled agency
The identity crisis and funding controversies are the latest to embroil NOAA, which has confronted a variety of issues in recent years.
The Miami Herald's "Blind Eye" series reported two years ago that defective buoys, weather balloons and other equipment and stagnant budgets were inhibiting progress in improving forecasts.
Late that year, Congress approved more than $25 million in emergency spending for new equipment.
Proenza, a 40-year veteran of the weather service, has a long reputation as a candid critic of NOAA.
Still, he shocked the bureaucracy last month when he told The Miami Herald -- during the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, his public debut as hurricane director -- that Congress and NOAA were bleeding forecasters of resources they need to protect Americans.
This week, the escalation of his criticism came -- at times -- while a public information officer from NOAA headquarters in Washington stood at Proenza's side.
Is Proenza, 62, risking the loss of his new job?
"I was told that NOAA doesn't want to muzzle its leaders," he said. "And they don't expect me to lie."
But he acknowledged that he needs to be careful.
"If I'm going to be effective in what I'm trying to do for this entire hurricane program," he said, "I can't allow myself to be fired."
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