Here's an extended excerpt (my highlights):
It's been almost 17 months since Hurricane Katrina pounded coastal Mississippi and southeast Louisiana, and about a year since Congress authorized the bulk of its rebuilding aid for the region. More than four months have passed since President Bush visited New Orleans on the anniversary of the storm and extolled the "amazing" reconstruction effort.
But a review of the devastated region shows that rebuilding is in a deep stall. Tens of thousands of residents remain displaced as authorities dither over how to disburse housing assistance. Many crucial infrastructure projects have yet to start. Of the tens of billions appropriated by Congress, half remains unspent.
There are many culprits. Among them: the size of the disaster, which continues to overwhelm agencies charged with rebuilding; the crush of competing bureaucracies, which has delayed many projects including the Bay St. Louis bridge; and weak local leadership.
In addition, many reconstruction efforts are ensnarled in spools of red tape spawned by a bevy of old and new government procedures. A prime example: an obscure set of 30-year-old Congressional rules designed to combat corruption known as the Stafford Act.
According to the White House, the federal government has provided $110 billion for the Gulf Coast region. But nowhere near that amount of actual cash has been made available. The total is spread over five states and covers damage done by three separate storms. Some of it consists of loans. A chunk comes from government insurance payouts that ultimately derived from premiums paid by homeowners themselves.
Of $42 billion given to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency has spent only $25 billion, federal records show. Most of that went to temporary housing, debris removal and emergency operations in the early days of the disaster. It has spent more than $4 billion on administrative costs.
Louisiana says the Army Corps of Engineers has spent only about $1.3 billion of the $5.8 billion it received to repair the levees in and around New Orleans. Only about $1.7 billion of the $17 billion received by the Department of Housing and Urban Development has made its way to the streets, the agency says.
In New Orleans, officials say they have received only about 14% of the estimated $900 million in reconstruction money they estimate is needed to fix the ruined city. "We have lots of meetings," says Cynthia Sylvain-Lear, the city's liaison with FEMA.
The state and federal anti-corruption regulations offer a glimpse as to why reconstruction efforts are going so slowly.
The White House has kept in force a set of rules known as the Stafford Act. Under its guidance, rebuilding funds must be accompanied by a 10% match from local governments, on the theory that localities won't misspend if their money is also on the line. Similarly, FEMA will cover only 75% of a project's cost until the job is complete.
The requirement has delayed projects while cash-strapped towns in two of the U.S.'s poorest states try to rustle up financing.
Meanwhile, both Louisiana and Mississippi have been so keen to burnish their images that they created their own set of lumbering regulatory bureaus and antifraud audit shops. The Stafford Act has been waived in the past -- it didn't apply to Manhattan in September 2001 or South Florida following Hurricane Andrew in 1992 -- but it remains in place along the Gulf. President Bush dropped the Act for a time for certain projects, such as emergency repairs and debris removal, only to reinstate it later.
The region's reputation for corruption is one reason why. Influence peddling on the coast has a long history, from 1930s Louisiana Gov. Huey Long to Edwin Edwards, a three-term governor currently serving a 10-year prison sentence. Recently, Mississippi was named the most corrupt state in the nation by Corporate Crime Reporter, a Washington, D.C., publication.
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In addition, today's John Maginnis op-ed in the T-P takes up the cause:
Sen. Mary Landrieu chaired a field hearing in New Orleans this week of her new Disaster Recovery Subcommittee, which was formed to prod action from FEMA, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other nooks in the bureaucratic maze.
She might start with a review of the Stafford Act, which in its inflexibility is damming up $2 billion in FEMA grants to local governments.
She has the ear of the full Homeland Security Committee chairman, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, as Landrieu was one of few Democrats who supported his candidacy as an independent against the Democratic anti-war nominee. Adding star power to her subcommittee is Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has a stake in demonstrating his compassionate effectiveness.
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Just to be clear, this is not the same Chris Cooper who starred in the fine films Matewan, Lone Star and Adaptation.
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