Local county judges and mayors appear set today to defy Gov. Rick Perry's order requiring the selection of a single commander to manage future catastrophic events in the greater Houston region, opting instead to handle the job by committee.

Former Kemah Mayor Bill King, who participated in the negotiations to select a local commander, acknowledged "big splits" over whether a single person should be named to oversee the entire region. Some local officials - the sprawling region includes major metro areas and small towns, coastal and inland communities - were reluctant to transfer any authority to one person, King said.

"As a former mayor, I can understand that feeling," he said. "But I'm afraid that if everyone doesn't surrender some measure of authority, we'll never have a coordinated evacuation. And if we don't do it voluntarily, it could be imposed by the state."

Perry's executive order, issued after the chaotic evacuation preceding the landfall of Hurricane Rita, calls upon each of 24 regions in Texas to name a commander to respond to natural and man-made disasters.

Elected officials in Harris and 12 surrounding counties, known as the Houston-Galveston Area Council, have instead chosen to elect a 15-person committee to determine how to handle such responses.

"It's probably impossible to find one person qualified to deal with every kind of event," said Jack Steele, executive director of the H-GAC.

Wide array of threats

The 13 county judges within the region, along with the mayors of Houston and Galveston, are expected to each nominate a member of the "command council." It's possible this council could then choose to name an executive committee or single member to coordinate responses, but the latter is unlikely.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels agreed with Steele, saying the greater Houston region is too large and faces too wide an array of disaster scenarios - from a hurricane to terrorist attack in the Houston Ship Channel - for a single commander to possess the qualifications to lead every conceivable response.

"An incident commander, by its nature, is specific to a particular incident," he said.

Eckels said local officials were consulting with Perry's office to resolve the issue, which stems from an executive order the governor issued on March 21.

In that order, Perry gave local regions until today to name a "unified command structure" to respond to disasters, with a single commander to be named by Thursday.

Expected to OK plan

The H-GAC will hold its monthly meeting this afternoon, and its members are expected to approve an incident plan that calls for a response by committee.

Perry spokeswoman Rachael Novier said the governor would withhold judgment of regional plans until they were formalized, but added that he expects his order to be followed.

"We have confidence that local leaders will implement the governor's executive order and adopt a regional unified command structure that protects lives and property in a catastrophic event," Novier said.

Perry issued the order after a hurricane task force held six public hearings across the state and made recommendations. By calling for a single commander with a year-long term, the governor sought to avoid the logistical and other problems that result when multiple cities, counties and regional jurisdictions must reach timely decisions in staging and managing evacuations.

Battling gridlock

Delays in opening contraflow lanes and unclear directions on specifically who needed to evacuate and when last September during Rita were blamed for causing some coastal residents to turn back when the freeways leading from Houston were jammed with fleeing inland residents.

After Rita, officials in coastal counties loudly criticized Houston and Harris County officials for failing to prevent the logjams. These same groups were asked to agree on a unified command for the next disaster.

During these talks, some local officials favored adoption of a protocol similar to the National Incident Management System, or NIMS, established by the federal government after the Sept. 11 attacks. It's a flexible plan for local officials to coordinate responses with the federal government after a disaster.

Dennis Storemski, Houston's top emergency management official, said a majority of local jurisdictions favored a NIMS-like approach, in which an ad-hoc leadership group would be named once a disaster occurs.

King, however, said such an approach ignores the fact that, unlike most natural disasters and terrorist attacks, hurricanes are somewhat predictable. Not only can they typically be forecast a few days in advance, but, unlike a bombing in the Ship Channel, planners can be fairly certain a hurricane will happen at some point.

For that reason, he said, there should be a permanent, defined command structure to continually plan and prepare for hurricanes.

"The whole idea of NIMS is to be prepared for any kind of disaster," King said. "But you don't have that problem with a hurricane. You know what you're going to be getting."