Fire sale

Last Sunday's Haaretz [29.01] had a front page story how the upcoming State Controller's Report into the Carmel Fire of December 2010 would call for the removal of two cabinet ministers, Yuval Steinmetz (Finance) and Eli Yishai (Interior), for their failure to prevent the excess damage the fire caused. Others are cited as having some responsibility, but only these two are singled out as expected to resign their position. Supposedly, they may be transferred to a different ministry/assignment.

The article in explaining Micha Lindenstruass's (the State Controller) rationale for ministerial responsibility as:

public servants can expect personal sanctions if they break the law, act maliciously, with complete indifference, negligently or close their eyes. The greater the failure of the public servant, the greater the demand for personal responsibility

He applied this to Yishai by arguing that:

The report will apparently say that Yishai's key error was in defining the state of fire preparedness as "catastrophic" in his own words, but not considering the danger to human life as a reason to threaten to resign from the cabinet if his demands to fund the Fire and Rescue Services were not met.
Lindenstrauss also apparently deems Yishai responsible for not having money within the Interior Ministry's budget moved to the firefighting service.

And to Steinmetz:

that the finance minister exceeded his authority and contravened cabinet decisions by preventing funding from reaching the Fire and Rescue Services by conditioning that funding on service reforms.

Let me see, he claims that the Finance Minister in demanding service reforms in an effort to ensure a more efficient and effective fire fighting service was negligent? That the Interior Minister didn't transfer adequate funds also acted irresponsibly?

It's true that the disaster was preventable. The Fire and Rescue Services could have been better funded.There could have, should have, been better communication and coordination between the various public safety bodies. However, all the mistakes were neither created nor enacted on the current government's watch. It was the result of long-term planning (sic.) of previous governments and the general civil service cultural battles.

Luckily, the comptroller's critique of elected officials, as opposed to public servants (bureaucrats), is not legally binding. His suggestion is a ludicrous one.

It has generated media coverage. Hopefully, that will prevent another disaster. It shouldn't come by having some officials fall on the sword needlessly. That suggestion misses the point of the review.