[FoCHAT] CHATNews: Rules finally posted; HMGP $ to RH, 1/2 of 1%

Sat Mar 6 09:58:25 CST 2010

Times-Picayune, Mar. 6, 2010. Letters to the Editor (not yet posted online but in the hard-copy of the newspaper today) 

Elevation Program Marked by Delay, Confusion 
Re: “Mind the deadline,”  Our Opinions, March 5 
Perhaps The Times-Picayune should have looked into the way the state is managing the Elevation Grant Program before recommending it to your readers… I submitted documents in September… The documents were approved and finally processed in December, and I am still waiting for midpoint payment. Meanwhile, because the program is a reimbursement program, I financed the project with credit cards foolishly thinking that I would have to make the $1200 monthly payments for a couple of months. 
                My caseworker has no further information and the Office of Disaster Recovery has no further information. Also, I am told by some contractors that they are in dire financial straits because they started out financing their clients but have not been paid in full because their clients cannot get reimbursed through the program. 
                As usual, the state has taken what should be a good idea and turned it into bureaucratic inefficiency only to be topped by the next program they administer. 
Cathy Pichon 
New Orleans 

Dear CHAT Members, 

Thank you, Cathy, for sending your excellent letter. 

Thank you to the other CHAT members who responded to my requests for information and who wrote to Terry Troncale, editorial page editor of the Times-Picayune. This is productive (and justified) complaining. 

I would like to add a hopeful note as well as some distressing context to Cathy Pichon’s remarks. 

Hopeful Note: 
Part of an email received from Robin Keegan late Friday 
“Also, I want to share with you that I rescinded this memo upon my receipt last Tuesday and it is no longer an operational policy for this program. 

The most current guidelines are the ones posted on mitigatela.org.” 
 _______________________________________ 
So you can go to http://mitigatela.org to see the guidelines. 
But I await (and will share with you) her answers to the following questions that I posed to her in response to the posting of these guidelines late yesterday. 

Will applicants be eligible for IMM even if they rebuilt their home after Hurricane Katrina? 

Will applicants be eligible for IMM for raising air conditioning even if they rebuilt their home after H. Katrina? 

Will applicants be eligible for IMM for window protection if they use any trustworthy window protection (any wind-proof shutters or plastic over the windows)? 

Will applicants be eligible for HMGP elevation if it cost more than $94 per square foot for them to rebuild their home? 

The bad news: 
It is not just bureaucratic inefficiency that led to so little HMGP funding being spent on Road Home applicants. It was the plan!. This plan started in Jan. 2008, when FEMA finally approved use of the $1.2 billion for RH applicants but the state moved glacially. 
Earlier, on Friday, I asked Keegan the following questions in an email. 
Why have only ~1% of the ~20,000 applicants to the hazard mitigation program (HMGP) received any funding? 
 Where is the rest of the $1.2 billion that was received by the state from FEMA for hazard mitigation? You have spent only ½ of 1% of it on Road Home applicants. 
I will most probably not receive an answer because I never received a meaningful answer to my 1 ½ year old public records request to Paul Rainwater, former Exec. Dir. of LRA & now special advisor to Gov. Jindal, for documents showing the expenditures of the $1.2 billion that Louisiana received as HMGP funds from FEMA for hurricane victims. The only answer I finally got (after a lawyer filed a mandamus suit for me) was the incredibly audacious (spit in the face of the public about spending of taxpayer money) “there is no document.” 
We can go quite a few years back to see the clear evidence of the original plan to divert money intended to help applicants first by shifting federal HMPG money to other parts of the state instead of giving it to the RH applicants. How did they do this? They funded most of the RH elevation grants from RH money, which was never in the plan until 2008.

$1.2 billion dollars that could have helped people build better and safer and how much will actually wind up in the public's hands?  
1/2 of 1% to the people and the rest?  
Will they ever admit or will the press ever cover the real story? - that they designed a program intended to keep the payouts low so they can claim another surplus of funds the state can ask Congress to spend elsewhere or that will be spent on items (and contractors) that will not lead to more applicant rebuilding. And they can divert HMGP funds to other parts of the state, which the 2005 hurricanes/floods never touched but which gives political capital. 
Don’t just take my word for the diversion of funds to other parts of Louisiana. As I scientist, I am careful to get documentation for my statements. You can read Rainwater’s own words at the link below. 
http://gohsep.la.gov/mitigation/20081603Allocations.pdf 

Here are the numbers behind the ½ of 1%: 
About 6 million dollars (as of this week) have been spent on HMGP elevation grants to applicants. 
About $1.2 billion (in some reports from the state it is $1.1 billion or $1.4 billion) came to the state as an automatic fraction of FEMA expenditures for disaster cleanup that were to be applied to hazard mitigation for the at-risk population for the future. The first LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin had stated publicly that that FEMA HMGP money was to be used for RH applicants elevation grants and they would not touch the RH funds for that purpose. 
$ 0.006 billion divided by $1.2 billion is ½ of 1%. 

Lastly, here is my unpublished letter to the editor submitted to the Times-Picayune yesterday at lunchtime. 
Mind the Rules 
Your recent editorial encouraged eligible Road Home applicants to meet a newly announced Mar. 10 deadline for applying for funds from the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP). However, applicants have been telling us that their applications for HMGP elevation grants are being denied because of an unpublicized rule, that they cannot have spent more than $84-94 per square foot to rebuild, which is certainly an unrealistic threshold. When I met with top officials of the state in mid January, I was promised the updated rules of the elevation grant and individual mitigation grant programs under HMGP. I still have not received them for electronic distribution to the many Road Home applicants who receive the newsletters from our grass-roots group. 

Yet worse is that in January the state removed all previous descriptions of the rules for these programs from their website.  From a leaked “internal memo” signed on Feb. 22, 2010 by a senior official of the program, we have learned that applicants who built rebuilt their homes after Hurricane Katrina are not eligible for the individual mitigation grant program and that there are complicated rules for what kinds of storm shutters are eligible expenses. This too has never been publicized. So grants up to $100,000 for home elevation and up to $7500 for things like storm shutters make great press for LRA but, before they get involved in much more paperwork, applicants should mind the rules. That is if they can get them! 
Melanie Ehrlich

Best wishes, 
Melanie Ehrlich 
Co-Chairman, Citizens’ Road Home Action Team (CHAT) 
http://chatushome.com 
For comments on HMGP, which will be kept anonymous unless you authorize otherwise: chatlra at yahoo.com 

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