Katrina Contractor On Board at FEMA

By Ken Silverstein

From POGO:

On March 4, 2009, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that Jason R. McNamara will serve as the Chief of Staff for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Mr. McNamara, a former FEMA program analyst, most recently served as a senior official in Dewberry’s Emergency Management, Disaster and Mitigation Services Group. Dewberry is a construction and consulting firm that has received over $1.3 billion in DHS contracts since 2000—many of which were FEMA Hurricane Katrina contracts. It is not clear whether the White House approved an ethics waiver to limit Mr. McNamara’s ability to influence FEMA contracts for his old firm, but it appears that he is already working at FEMA.