Contracts for clean-up and rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina that were awarded without competition will be opened up for rebidding, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said on Thursday. David Paulison, who took over at FEMA last month after the previous director quit under a hail of criticism, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the agency was looking at the no-bid contracts carefully and was striving to reduce dependence on them in future disasters. "We are going to rebid all of those no-bid contracts and then they were in the process of starting to do that," Paulison said. "And maybe they should have done sooner." He said he had "never been a fan of no-bid contracts," but that "sometimes you have to do them because of the expediency of getting things done." Contracts worth at least $1.5 billion were awarded to firms with little or no competition to help clean up and begin the reconstruction of the devastated Gulf Coast region, and local many contractors were pushed aside. --more 2159 Local Time 1859 GMT
