Last week, I attended a private sector roundtable with the new FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate. The fact that FEMA hosted a roundtable for stakeholders from the private sector is an encouraging sign. It shows that FEMA understands the importance of the private sector in the response and recovery process, and that they are willing to work together to improve the way our nation handles disasters.

Here are a few takeaways from the roundtable:

• The Administrator started the meeting by saying that as Emergency Management Director of the State of Florida, they originally thought about the private sector in terms of "what the private sector can do to help the government handle the disaster." But, as time went on, they started thinking, "what can the government do to help the private sector get back up and running?" The reason for this is that the private sector was providing all the goods and services to the population before the disaster, so the quicker the private sector can again be providing goods and services to the population, the quicker the community will rebound.
• The Administrator also mentioned that in Florida, the state brought associations into the State Emergency Operations Center to be a liaison with the private sector. This is an encouraging sign for BCLC to build upon our presence at the Joint Field Office last year during Hurricane Ike.
• I asked him about his thoughts on FEMA's role in long term recovery. He first said that people talk of long term recovery without having an actual definition of the word. He said that he believes long term recovery is reestablishing a tax base that is equal to or greater than before the disaster. He also said that people should not look to the Stafford Act for things that it cannot provide. FEMA is a reimbursement agency, so he said that communities need to also look for Community Development Block Grant dollars or other sources of funding to help bring back the community. He stressed the importance of community recovery, and the fact that even if businesses return, their employees need houses to live in, schools for the kids, etc. This idea of businesses and communities being inextricably linked is an encouraging sign from a government leader.