Lousiana companies not getting reconstruction contracts

No surprise here:

A Department of Homeland Security official tasked with helping local businesses get post-Hurricane Katrina contracts resigned in frustration last week because he could not secure catering work for local vendors.

Doug Doan, a business liaison at DHS, lined up a group of Louisiana chefs and restaurants to provide 26,000 meals a day in St. Tammany Parish to people without power and unable to cook for themselves.

Instead of the seafood pasta and beef with a red wine mushroom reduction that Doan arranged, box lunches and military rations known as meals-ready-to-eat, or MREs, from outside Louisiana are being served.

Gulf Coast lawmakers, such as Rep. Bennie Thompson (news, bio, voting record), D-Miss., and other critics have complained about the federal government's failure to steer recovery dollars to businesses in the areas affected by the storm. A list of contracts awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that as of Oct. 3, two of 140 agreements had gone to Louisiana prime contractors.

"Louisiana makes the best food in the world," Doan said Tuesday. "To be bringing in beanie weenies from Florida or peanut butter sandwiches from Ohio at a greater cost ... is an outrage."

Doan had worked for the department about two years and arrived in Louisiana Sept. 27. He resigned Oct. 5. Valerie Smith, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, confirmed Doan left for "personal reasons."

Smith said "obtaining food for disaster victims is traditionally a Red Cross issue. It's very unusual for DHS to get involved," adding that "contracting vehicles for non-traditional food through FEMA and Homeland Security do not exist."

Nicol Andrews, a FEMA spokeswoman, said her understanding of Doan's proposal is that it "skirted around the law."

"The federal government can't play favorites to certain businesses one over another," Andrews said. "This was not following the rules." Doan says Andrews is "flat wrong," noting President Bush and Congress have said local firms should be involved in the Gulf Coast's recovery.

The catering for St. Tammany would have helped reinvigorate the economy in a state that lost 30% of its businesses to the hurricane. The federal government has allocated about $17 billion in contracts related to Katrina, but Doan said he couldn't cut through rules and red tape to bring more of those dollars to Louisiana businesses.

Now here's a REAL area where government red tape is getting in the way. But I don't hear conservatives screaming about this. I guess seeking local business is regarded by the Administration as "favoritism" -- as opposed to giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton so Dick Cheney's stock options can increase in value by 3,281% in just one year.