Brock Long’s tenure as the head of FEMA has been surprisingly controversial. Today, it came to an end.
FEMA Administrator Brock Long announced Wednesday that he would resign from his post. Peter Gaynor will serve as acting administrator.
Long had been criticized and investigated by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general for allegedly misusing government vehicles to travel to his home in North Carolina. However, he will be leaving on his own accord, per Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, the Trump administration has been burdened by a series of controversies over top officials misusing public funds for personal travel, though Brock Long appeared to offer a rather extreme example of the problem.
According to a Wall Street Journal report last year, the FEMA chief often left his agency’s office in D.C. on Thursdays, using public resources to drive 400 miles — each way — to his home in North Carolina.
Long reportedly traveled “with a caravan of federal workers, who stayed in nearby hotels for the long weekend,” all at taxpayer expense. In all, after his first full year on the job, he reportedly spent “about 150 days” in North Carolina.
The Washington Post added that the FEMA chief also used government resources “during a family vacation in Hawaii, despite official warnings the practice was unauthorized, an internal investigation found.”
Though accounts differ, there were some reports that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked Long to consider resigning back in September.
The FEMA administrator was eventually ordered to “reimburse the government for his misuse of federal vehicles,” but Long was not forced from his post.
Five months later, he’s exiting the stage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."