The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has demonstrated the tragic consequences of a failure of governance.  The inability of the federal, state and local government to respond quickly to this disaster has cost many lives.  Emergency preparedness and crisis response requires clear plans, prior agreements, effective communications and rapid coordination of action by multiple organizations.  A review of what went wrong with Hurricane Katrina will reveal that we as a nation are not prepared to act regionally in ways that transcend jurisdictional boundaries and bring all appropriate resources to communities when needed.

Can we learn from Katrina and develop more effective responses?  As a national debate begins on how to respond to this emergency and prepare for future ones, the Alliance for Regional Stewardship has an important message.  After September 11, 2001, ARS issued a call for regional compacts to help local, state, federal and private sector organizations prepare for homeland security.  A regional compact was developed in the National Capital Region.  ARS Chair George Vradenburg was actively involved in that effort.  Other regions have developed emergency response systems including regions in Florida, Coastal Georgia and the bi-state Kansas City region.

A March 2002 ARS publication, Regional Emergency Preparedness Compacts, found that:

• Emergency preparedness requires collaboration among all levels of government along with the private and civic sectors.
• State and federal government governments providing support for emergency preparedness have all too often ?stovepiped? their delivery to individual units of local government.
• Targeting federal and state government and other national resources to develop and implement regional emergency preparedness compacts today could help assure that first providers effectively address threats tomorrow.

This would require a new approach to governance, moving from the traditional ?vertical? agency approaches to more ?horizontal? regional approaches.  At the time, Tom Ridge, then Director of the Office of Homeland Security, said: ?We hope to change the old relationshipcity-state-federalinto one based on mutual cooperation, collaboration and partnership.?

However, implementation of the national homeland security strategy did not stimulate regional plans and did not encourage a new regional approach on a widespread basis.  Hurricane Katrina once more makes clear that it is time that reexamine governance in America and decide how we can act regionally, across jurisdictional boundaries.  Local and state agencies need to cooperate with the federal government in more effective ways within regions.  Regional compacts are clearly worth examining.