During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to "appoint a chief financial officer to oversee the rebuilding following national disasters to minimize waste and abuse."
In September 2011, the Obama administration released an intergovernmental plan for handling future disasters titled, "National Disaster Recovery Framework: Strengthening Disaster Recovery for the Nation."
We looked through this plan but did not see any mention of a "chief financial officer." We did see an outline of the federal officials responsible for dealing with disasters. A federal coordinating officer is the highest-ranking federal official for a disaster, with a "federal disaster recovery coordinator" serving as the deputy.
The federal disaster recovery coordinator is responsible for "facilitating disaster recovery coordination and collaboration between the federal, tribal, state and local governments, the private sector and voluntary, faith-based and community organizations," the framework says.
The framework does address waste, fraud and abuse on two occasions. It says "factors of a successful recovery" include "adequate financial monitoring and accounting systems for new and large levels of investment," including "systems that detect and deter fraud, waste and abuse." And it says that federal and state officials will "coordinate" to "prosecute disaster-related fraud, waste, discrimination and abuse and recover lost funds."
But two passing mentions in a 116-page report doesn't exactly make for a headline issue.
What's happened after real disasters? For a long time, we resisted rating this promise because experts we consulted with agreed that there was no disaster of a large enough scale to require this sort of response.
But then Hurricane Sandy slammed into the Atlantic coastline in late October 2012. On Nov. 15, 2012, Obama announced that Obama "has asked Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan to continue to work closely with governors, mayors and local officials of New Jersey and New York as they begin the process of identifying redevelopment plans for affected communities."
This was enough for us to move a separate Obama pledge -- to appoint a "federal coordinating officer to direct reconstruction efforts" following a major disaster -- to Promise Kept.
For this promise, though, the administration's progress hasn't been as clear. In administration summaries about its work on Sandy, we have not yet seen specific references to combating waste and abuse. To be fair, it's still early -- as this update was being written, some residents were still lacking power and basic necessities.
Because the administration has cited the importance of fighting waste, fraud and abuse -- but in passing, without a specific official being tasked with the assignment -- we rate this promise a Compromise.