A move by the Pentagon that would allow it to deploy national reserve forces to U.S. disaster and emergency areas has drawn fire from the nation’s governors and those concerned about civil liberties. Currently, those deployments are at the request and under the command of state officials.

The plan, which was recently proposed to Congress, has been criticized as everything from a power play that will cause confusion during disasters to the death of Posse Comitatus—the 1878 law that prohibits the military from taking a law enforcement role in U.S. states. Past attempts to maim or dismantle Posse Comitatus—including George Bush’s post-Katrina stab at revising the doctrine—have been frequent enough to make many wary of changes, according to an article in The Progressive.

The National Governors Association (NGA) isn’t primarily concerned with what Mike German of the American Civil Liberties Union called the undermining of “a 100-year-old prohibition…with no public debate and seemingly little understanding of the threat to democracy.” Instead, they’re more worried that a separate command would hinder, rather than help, when responding to large-scale emergencies.

“The strong potential exists for confusion in mission execution and the dilution of governors' control over situations with which they are more familiar and better capable of handling than a federal military commander," according to a NGA letter to Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense Paul Stockton.

Federal officials, though, say that a change to Posse Comitatus is needed so they can provide quicker response, especially with so many National Guard troops tied up in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to an Associated Press report.

“The key here is that right now, we lack the authority to bring to bear the hundreds of thousands of trained reserve forces that in extreme circumstances might help governors deal with the disasters in their states," Stockton said in an AP interview. "This provision would in no way impede or undermine or inadvertently reduce the authority that governors exercise under the United States Constitution.”

The NGA letter stated that it was unclear how giving the Department of Defense wider authority would help responsiveness and pointed out that it already has the authority to mobilize troops at a state’s request. A Congressional fact sheet on the matter released by U.S. Northern Command details the department’s reasoning for the proposal.