Hurricane Bonus

Another hurricane has crashed into New Orleans just as the city seemed to be completing its recovery from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Hurricane Gustav swept in from the Gulf of Mexico on Labor Day, with powerful winds forcing millions to evacuate their homes to avoid repeat of the Katrina disaster.

But hurricane season, it seems, isn’t all doom and gloom at the Federal Communications Commission because the late-August, early-September period is bonus season for top bureaucrats. And nothing gets between FCC leaders and their cash rewards.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin was supposed to be manning the battle stations to help communications providers keep New Orleans connected after Katrina hit. Yet in the middle of that crisis, Martin found time to do a little paper work—as in approving some nice bonuses for his closest aides.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Monday Aug. 29, 2005. Four days later, Martin approved a $5,000 bonus for his chief of staff, Daniel Gonzalez (annual pay $149,000).

Gonzalez—signing on the dotted line for Martin on that same Friday—inked the necessary documents to approve equally nice Category 5 bonuses for other top Martin aides, including: $5,000 for Catherine Bohigian (paid $149,200 as a senior legal advisor); $5,000 for Sam Feder (paid $135,136 as FCC general counsel); and $5,000 for Thomas Navin (paid $135,136 as chief of the Wireline Competition bureau).

The bonus information, by the way, came from documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. An FCC spokeswoman, who confirmed Martin’s signature on the Gonzalez bonus, would only say that the rewards were a routine matter.

That’s what’s great about the FCC. The people in charge never let the extraordinary get in the way of the ordinary. Perhaps House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), who’s been investigating Martin’s FCC management practices since last December, has a slightly different perspective on FCC priorities.