National Hurricane Center Director Bill Proenza resigned today after about half of his staff signed a petition saying he should be booted.
He's being accused of asking for unnecessary funding to replace a satellite component called QuickStatScat in an unsuccessful power play. Says one commenter on The Lede (via the New York Times):
QuickScat was an experimental component on a NASA satellite. It was supposed to last for just a few years. QuickScat is a tool for forecasting intensity, not track. Proenza was trying a power play to raise his budget and his prominence–as he did when he was head of the weather service’s souther region–and rather than do it through channels, he did it through leaks to the media. He exaggerated what the loss of the QuickScat would do and undermined all the public confidence in the NHC Max Mayfield took years to build. And he GROSSLY exaggerated the extent of the NOAA 200th anniversary commemoration–it’s a few publications and small employee events around the country, nothing a large organization wouldn’t normally do for employee morale, not a $4
million party. (NOAA is the hurricane center’s parent agency.)
He tried a political power play for budget and power–and lost.
Nothing more. And what made it worse was that he went to the Miami
Herald before he went to his bosses.
Proenza, on the other hand, told CNN that government officials punished him because they wanted him to keep quiet about the state of the satellite. What do you think?
Proenza is still an NOAA employee but on leave. Meanwhile, Deputy Director Ed Rappaport is temporarily in charge.
