Tom Ridge never put up with shenanigans from emergency management officials. We should not put up with it, either.

Old-timers will recall Ridge’s earliest days as a congressman when he took on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, incensed over FEMA’s sluggish response to a string of major tornadoes hitting our 3rd District in the spring of 1985.

Ridge’s frustration was evident back then, as his almost-daily criticisms of FEMA’s foot-dragging did little to transform the red tape into actual help for disaster victims in Erie, Crawford and Mercer counties. There were tornado victims living in tents who needed shelter, not vouchers or SBA loans. It took a month before the first emergency mobile housing was delivered. It would have taken much longer without Ridge’s full-court press.

The experience was certain to influence Ridge’s two terms as governor, during which he held the executive reins of FEMA’s state counterpart, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency — PEMA, the agency now coordinating flood recovery efforts and resources in Butler.

Memories of that experience are likely to have remained fresh on Ridge’s mind 16 years later, when President George W. Bush summoned him to direct the Department of Homeland Security — a newly formed Cabinet post that included oversight of FEMA.

As DHS director, Ridge was charged with reorganizing FEMA and 21 other independent agencies into the behemoth agency comprising more than 180,000 employees. Ridge resigned in 2005, six months before Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and proved how inadequate FEMA’s emergency response remained.

Ridge, now retired from public service, would have questioned the decision Thursday to bar news reporters from a meeting with local emergency and government officials to coordinate flood recovery efforts.

The media have a duty to gather and disseminate information as quickly, accurately and completely as possible. That means including reporters in discussions about our neighbors and our neighborhoods.

The government’s woefully inadequate response to Katrina caused many to argue for returning FEMA to an independent status. Ridge, who had resigned six months before Katrina, questioned why federal recovery resources weren’t in place before the storm hit. But repositioning FEMA as an independent entity now would only result in needless duplication of effort, he said.

“If you didn’t have an emergency management organization within DHS, you’d build one, and you don’t need two,” he explained.

Likewise, officials can argue that a news conference after Thursday’s meeting covered all the issues they discussed at the meeting. But the time and effort put into a news conference wasn’t even necessary if reporters had been allowed to attend the original meeting.

After all, this is our community — our home. We’re glad the emergency management officials are here — back on Tom Ridge’s home turf. They should remember all the good intentions he had for the agency and resist temptation to backslide to bureaucratic mediocrity.

But government has a knack for gumming up emergency recovery efforts, and then having a hard time explaining why because much of what they did was done behind closed doors.

Maybe Ridge spoiled us a little when he showed the 3rd District not to put up with FEMA or PEMA shenanigans. Let’s honor his example and keep this recovery mission a public matter.