When you review the numbers breakdown in this important
Da Po Blog post, there's a few other little factoids worth keeping in mind. I excerpted the below quote from Chris Cooper and Robert Block's excellent book
"Disaster". They will speak at the
Rising Tide conference on Sunday.
The background is that the President has once again reminded us that "our government has committed over $110 billion to help" Gulf Coast states recover from Katrina.
Concerning the much bally-hooed appropriations, Cooper and Block observe (p289):
[Much] of the federal reconstruction money came with strings attached. A large portion was in the form of loans that would eventually have to be repaid. FEMA also reckoned that the state of Louisiana owed Washington about $1 billion as its share of the overall costs... When the state requested an itemization [for the first installment], FEMA balked.
...
In a report it submitted to Congress in February, FEMA said that a whopping $7.7 billion of the $29.7 billion spent to date had gone toward ["administration"] expenses-- an overhead rate of 26 percent.
Louisiana received a pittance thus far for coastal wetlands restoration.
The idea of Cat 5 Flood protection for S. Louisiana has been relegated to long term "study".
FEMA, apparently, has an overhead rate worse than Baghdadi subcontractors. And FEMA continues to shaft local companies by giving 87% of the rebuilding contracts to favored out-of- state companies like
Fluor and Ch2M Hill.
And then the President wants to remind us bout the government's generous appropriations, which include payment of federally guaranteed insurance claims.
How nice of them to choose to do that.
4 Comments:
Once again, another case of doublespeak. The government says one thing and means another. A lot of the "aid" given just go down the drain and back to the coffers of the government. What's our taxes doing just lying there?
I know that a lot of the large FEMA reimbursements to hospitals, school boards, cities, etc... are being held up by state auditors. A hospital I'm familiar with had about $1million in money due from FEMA but a state auditor wouldn't approve the paperwork for Katrina related damages. When the hospital told him that he had already approved Rita related damages he started crawfishing.
Also, Blanco has been holding back money via the Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco Road Home Program.
BTW-I'm not defending FEMA they have been typical of any bloated gov't bureaucracy. Wasteful and slow.
Worse still is public perception: by not having or not making the time to examine the feds' claims, a lot of people will get the wrong idea.
Some, as you know, already have stunningly incorrect perceptions about the situation--like it being a "natural" disaster as opposed to a matter of civil and criminal liability (in New Orleans). Or those who say they're "tired of wasting all [their] tax dollars" on a "city 20 feet below sea level that's washing away anyway and has crooks for politicians."
Those claims, of course, are more myth than reality...but battling myths is one of the hardest tasks because people tend to reject facts once they've made up their mind.
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