----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: The Man Common
Date: Apr 25, 2007 9:24 AM

Governors object to expanded federal authority to deploy National Guard

By Lisa Zagaroli

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Giving the president more authority to mobilize the National Guard in domestic emergencies has threatened to derail state disaster planning and response, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley told U.S. senators Tuesday.

Easley said he had the unanimous - and rare - support of 49 other governors in objecting to a change made last year to a 19th century law known as the Insurrection Act.

The amendment expanded the ability of the president of the United States to "federalize" Guard members during terrorist attacks, natural disasters, disease outbreak and other conditions without consulting governors.

While there is no question the president has the authority to call up the part-time military for war, governors say they retain control over domestic situations like riots and hurricanes.

The change made in a 2006 defense bill could result in "confusion and an inability to respond to residents' needs," Easley said in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of the National Governors Association. Easley and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford co-lead a task force on Guard issues.

"If the president reaches in and takes this away from us, then our whole plan collapses," Easley said before the hearing.

Easley told senators that National Guard units train with local and state first responders.

"These drills do not simply involve role-playing and response, but establish critical lines of communication and uniform operating procedures," he said.

The governor said that when states are responding to hurricanes or pandemics, they shouldn't have to get in a tug-of-war with the White House over who is in charge. He said states know best what kind of response teams to mobilize, and they know their terrain better to make appropriate decisions quickly.

The Capitol Hill hearing was attended by only a few senators who insisted that the change in law had slipped by them in the dark of night without consultation during the last Congress.

Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., called the change "ill-conceived, unnecessary and dumb."

The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, R-Vt., said he objected that governors hadn't been consulted before control of state Guard units was "stripped" from them.

But in a phone interview with McClatchy Newspapers after the hearing, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took credit for authoring the amendment and said he couldn't believe the way it was being characterized. He said the wording sat on lawmakers' desks for several months.

"We did it in order to help a president, whoever it may be at the time, for national calamities, to bring together the Guard and the regular forces in a coordinated way, that's all," Warner said. "It was done in the best of intentions. It was examined by the Pentagon, by everybody."

Easley said members of the North Carolina delegation hadn't known about the change they voted for, nor did they seem particularly worried about it, when his office approached theirs.

Only 10 times since World War II has the National Guard been federalized under the Insurrection Act, said Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau. Most of those events involved civil rights disruptions in the 1950s and 1960s.

"If these provisions had been in effect during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina response, the president could have unilaterally seized control of the National Guard forces of all 54 states, territories and the District of Columbia," said Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, adjutant general of the state of Washington.

Leahy said he feared that states would resort to private contracting to maintain response capabilities in a state crisis.

"Do you want a Blackwater, or do you want the nation's adjutant generals and the outstanding men and women from among our neighbors who wear the uniforms of the National Guard?" Leahy said in written testimony, a reference to the N.C. security firm that lost several employees in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents.

North Carolina has 10,000 soldiers in the Army National Guard at 95 facilities in 75 counties, and 1,500 airmen at three Air National Guard facilities in Charlotte, New London and Badin.

The Guard members have been frequently dispatched to help out in storms and other emergencies, said a state Guard spokesman, Sgt. Robert Jordan.

More than 800 National Guardsmen are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 11,000 Guard members have served in the war on terror - all but three of the state's units - since Sept. 11, 2001, Jordan said.

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