A quick rundown of who Michael Brown is, his lack of qualifications, and the history of the SELA project. This originated from a claim from a friend of a friend (likely from conservative talk radio) that the levees have been broken for 20 years and no president has fixed it. Not true:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313
That article is a pretty good rundown of what happened. Basically in 1995 SELA was enacted to fix the levees, but it was a decade-plus engineering project and its funding was slashed in 2003 to pay for the war.
Also don't miss this:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_08/007014.php
Executive summary- FEMA was a place where Bush Sr. used to stash unqualified political appointees, Clinton appointed actual experts. Bush installed a lawyer who has no experience with Emergency Management aside from titular oversight of emergency services as an assistant city manager in Edmund, Oklahoma. Obviously this is not on a scale that qualifies one for FEMA, and probably didn't much more detail. He was originally brought on to be a lawyer for FEMA; he was buddies in college with Joe Allbaugh, one of Bush's political fixers who was originally appointed to FEMA by Bush to replace James Lee Witt. Allbaugh had no relevant qualifications that I'm aware of.
More about Brown:
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002458.html
More about Brown and Allbaugh:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_08_28.php#006373
There's a little more detail here from a 2004 New Orleans Times-Picayune article, talking about the reasons why the funding was slashed and the efforts to bring it back:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/8/30/212451/290
Also, here's some more detail about Brown's lack of qualifications:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28022-2004Dec26_2.html