Short-Staffed FEMA Farms Out Procurement

Davis said the bill is intended to speed aid to disaster victims, but some procurement law experts said it would do little to help agencies get money out the door faster and could end up exposing the government to fraud.

The lack of a paper trail, they said, would make it nearly impossible for government investigators to audit the contracts down the line.

"There are possibilities for abuse -- lots of big ones," said Joshua I. Schwartz, co-director of the government procurement law program at George Washington University. "This is not a finely honed instrument or a tweak. This is Tom Davis saying all our procurement could be done under other-than-competitive procedures."

Schwartz is a member of a federal advisory panel examining procurement reform, one that Davis was instrumental in creating.

The legislation would apply only to purchases related to an officially designated national emergency or major disaster. But those designations are fairly common. Every year there are several dozen major disasters and national emergencies, including ones related to terrorist attacks.

Government watchdog groups said yesterday that the bill would reduce accountability and transparency when it came to any purchase that could be linked to an emergency. The Project on Government Oversight, which called the bill the "Disaster Profiteering Act," said it was especially concerned that an increased number of Defense and Homeland Security department purchases would be conducted through no-bid contracts and without vital information from contractors.

Robert White, a spokesman for Davis, said the additional powers would be used only rarely, in cases where an agency's head signs off on the need for a faster process.

"This is about getting the government to move faster in times of emergency, and it's about saving lives," White said.