SEATTLE – The chief of the Northwest’s federal disaster response division is defending his background and job qualifications after the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s national director was removed from on-site command of hurricane relief efforts and questioned about his job experience.
John Pennington was a four-term state representative from Cowlitz County who ran a coffee shop when he was appointed regional director of FEMA. He got the job with the help of former U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash.
His qualifications for the job could come under question as criticism builds over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. On Friday, FEMA director Michael Brown was removed from his post overseeing relief efforts in Louisiana and ordered back to Washington, D.C.
Eric Holdeman, director of emergency services in King County, is among those who have ridiculed FEMA for the lack of experience of some of its key administrators.
“It’s important that you be a professional emergency manager,” he told a local newspaper for a report on Saturday. “Walking through an emergency room doesn’t make you a doctor. Likewise, you want the people overseeing a disaster to know what it’s all about.”
Holdeman said Pennington at least relies on experienced staff members, including his deputy director, Tammy Doherty, a career emergency manager.
Pennington, 38, was appointed head of FEMA’s Region 10 office following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He earns an annual salary of $138,000 overseeing the federal disaster response in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
Pennington received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from California Coast University in Santa Ana., Calif. At the time, it was an unaccredited correspondence school. Last year during testimony before Congress, investigators for the General Accounting Office called it a diploma mill. The university was one of three unaccredited schools investigated because they had received $169,000 in government funding to cover tuition for 463 federal employees enrolled as students.
GAO special agent Paul DeSaulniers said California Coast University sold degrees for a flat fee. In January, California Coast obtained federal accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council, according to Sally Welch, the council’s assistant director.
“It was a pretty questionable school for a lot of years,” she said. “They had to make a lot of changes.”
Pennington said he knew the school was not accredited when he enrolled in 1998, but defended his education and insisted he is qualified for the FEMA job. California Coast fit his needs, he said, adding that illness forced him to forgo an ROTC scholarship to Vanderbilt University in his hometown of Nashville, Tenn.
“I was not looking to build my credentials,” he said. “I worked hard to do what was best for me.”
His interest in disaster management began after he saw the result of floods and landslides in Cowlitz County, and became directly involved after a slide in Kelso destroyed 141 structures.
At the time, Pennington was a two-term state representative. He lobbied FEMA and later President Clinton to have the county designated as a federal disaster area.
“I got an in-depth working knowledge of Region 10 in that process,” he said.
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