Politics
March 2, 2007
President Bush's visit on Thursday to New Orleans and Mississippi avoids areas that still show the worst of Katrina's wrath in favor of rebuilt homes, reports National Public Radio. Critics say many federal funds earmarked for the rebuilding effort are not being spent.
Democratic House leaders, seeking to steal some of the spotlight from President Bush as he toured the Gulf, moved to pass legislation Thursday that will release hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds and speed relief to Hurricane Katrina-damaged areas, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday approved a bill that waives the 25 percent or 10 percent local match required of some FEMA funding and cancels repayment of Community Disaster loans. The leaders said they would attach the language to the emergency supplemental funding bill which Congress is expected to approve later this month.
Texas communities hit by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina would get the same full federal reimbursement for cleanup and recovery as Louisiana and Mississippi under an amendment approved Thursday by a House committee. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee unanimously approved an amendment by U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Stafford, that would waive the 25 percent local match required to obtain federal hazard mitigation and rebuilding funds and direct emergency assistance for communities and individuals. The Houston Chronicle reports that the measure also would cancel the repayment of community disaster loans for the affected areas, ending the post-Katrina practice of designating such aid as loans rather than grants.
March 1, 2007
As President Bush heads to New Orleans today to tour a school and talk about education, House Democrats are preparing to unveil legislation that would pour $250 million into the city's hurricane-ravaged school system over the next five years. The Democrats' plan, details of which were provided to The Times-Picayune late Wednesday, would grant financial incentives to teachers and principals to stay in or move to New Orleans. It also would pay $500-per-month housing subsidies and authorize as much as $500 million in grants to universities and colleges closed by flooding after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Homeland Security Department's emergency preparedness division need to improve oversight and management of grants, lawmakers told agency officials Wednesday. Calls for improvement come about a month before FEMA is slated to receive more responsibility for distributing grants, reports govexec.com. Matt Jadacki, DHS deputy inspector general for disaster assistance oversight, said about 2,700 grants, worth about $8.7 billion, have been executed for Hurricane Katrina alone. The DHS inspector general continues to conduct reviews of those grants, he said.
February 28, 2007
The governor of Arizona could not take over residents' weapons during a war emergency, according to a bill that advanced easily in the state House Tuesday, reports The Arizona Republic. Lawmakers made an exception for large caches of ammunition, an allowance that should ensure that the gun bill wins Gov. Janet Napolitano's signature. Designed to prevent the kind of gun confiscation that happened in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the bill would prevent the governor from commandeering firearms and weapons during a state of war emergency. The New Orleans police chief confiscated residents' weapons in the wake of Katrina, citing public safety. The National Rifle Association successfully sued to have the weapons returned, and the Louisiana Legislature changed the law last year to bar such confiscations.
February 27, 2007
Tons of debris from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have been dumped into landfills created near minority communities in the New Orleans area and could pose a risk to surrounding land and waterways, a congressional committee was told on Monday. The Disaster News Network reports that the Rev. Vein The Nguyen of the Mary Queen of Viet Nam Church and a representative of Citizens for a Strong New Orleans East, urged the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works to launch federal investigations into the debris removal activities, including the more than 200 illegal dump sites throughout the state that have been identified by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
See Disaster News Network article
February 26, 2007
Governors concerned about the demands the war in Iraq is placing on their National Guard forces met with a top Guard official Sunday and said they were closely monitoring deployment of their troops, worn-out equipment and how ready they would be for domestic emergencies. The Associated Press reports that governors also hoped to convince Congress to reverse a step taken last year in response to Hurricane Katrina that gave the president greater power to deploy troops for problems at home, a power previously reserved for the states' top leaders.
January 24, 2007
President Bush unveiled a raft of new domestic initiatives in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, but didn't utter a word about the slow crawl of recovery along the Gulf Coast nearly a year and a half after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, reports The Times-Picayune. The federal government has set aside more than $100 billion for Gulf Coast recovery, but Democrats and one Republican in Louisiana's congressional delegation expressed anger and disappointment that Bush made no mention in his most important annual speech about the challenges still facing the region.
The Little Sisters of the Poor, a famed order of nuns who take a vow of poverty, say the city of New Orleans owes them a hefty sum of money after Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has doled out $1.4 million to reimburse the order because one of its facilities, the Mary Joseph Residence for the Elderly in New Orleans, was used as an emergency operations center after the storm. But the money had to go through channels — first to the state and then to the city of New Orleans, reports The Associated Press. It has been sitting in the city's coffers for about a month and it could take several more weeks before the nuns receive the funding.
A bold plan put forward by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — and currently being discussed in the new Congress — would build a semipermeable "Great Wall of Louisiana" from the Mississippi River to Texas to block the advancing Gulf of Mexico and, at the same time, do the opposite of what a levee is supposed to do: Allow water through to keep marshlands from drowning in the kind of brackish backwaters that are killing off Louisiana's signature swamps at the rate of more than 30 acres a year. For some 120,000 people along Louisiana's blue-collar coast, the "Morganza-to-the-Gulf" levee is seen as salvation, especially since the 2005 storms, reports The Christian Science Monitor. But critics say that such a "leaky levee" is a false hope, a taxpayer-funded Louisiana hay wagon that is scientifically unproven and even detrimental to both the region's ecology and economy.
See Christian Science Monitor article
January 3, 2007
By announcing his presidential candidacy in New Orleans, John Edwards said he was trying to make two points: that the city's slow recovery highlights the "two Americas" of rich and poor that became the symbol of his first run for president in 2004, and that it is important for Americans not to just complain about problems but to "take action" as so many post-Katrina volunteers did. How the setting for his presidential announcement will affect his candidacy and whether it will refocus national attention on the unfinished business of Katrina remains to be seen, reports The Times-Picayune. But political pundits agree Katrina is a good issue for Edwards because it fits with one of his campaign's major themes: the need for the next president to address the growing divide between the haves and the have-nots.
December 19, 2006
If any more evidence was needed that the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina will play a prominent role in Democratic efforts to take back the White House in 2008, it has arrived, reports The New York Times. Former Sen. John Edwards will announce his second presidential bid next week in the storm-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
December 13, 2006
The leader of a nonpartisan Mississippi watchdog group is urging state ethics commissioners to decide whether three legislators are breaking the law by profiting from a contract that allows them to finalize grants for Hurricane Katrina victims. The Mississippi Press reports that Dick Johnson, president of the Mississippi affiliate of Common Cause, also says ethics commissioners should tell the public about the results of their investigation.
December 12, 2006
Under the guiding hand and watchful eye of a state transition team, the commissioners of four local levee boards in the New Orleans region are preparing to conduct business a final time before their appointments expire Dec. 31, reports The Times-Picayune. The dissolution of local governing boards in favor of regional oversight fulfills a congressional mandate that the state consolidate levee operations in southeast Louisiana or forfeit millions of federal dollars earmarked to study how to best protect against catastrophic storms. Two new authorities will manage the maintenance of flood- and hurricane-protection systems on both sides of the Mississippi River, ending the balkanized system of management that some critics say contributed to the failed patchwork of levees and floodwalls during Hurricane Katrina.
December 8, 2006
Standing in front of a crumpled, flood-damaged Honda on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott and other lawmakers said they're pushing to end "title washing," in which cars with troubled histories are sold to unsuspecting consumers. The Mississippi Republican said about 500,000 cars were damaged by Hurricane Katrina — including the one he used to drive — and many have been cleaned up and resold, reports The Clarion-Ledger. Lott and the other lawmakers said they will press the new Congress to approve legislation that would require insurance companies and others who take possession of totaled or heavily damaged cars to disclose that the vehicles are rebuilt wrecks.
December 6, 2006
A Coast-wide business group is rallying local politicians to press Mississippi lawmakers to address the wind-pool insurance crisis, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The wind pool was created after Hurricane Camille to provide wind coverage in hurricane-prone areas where companies don't want to write standard policies. When damage exceeds premiums, the more-than-500 insurance companies that do business in the state have to pay the difference. Insurers had to pay more than $545 million in wind-pool losses from Katrina. After Katrina, state Insurance Commissioner George Dale approved a 268 percent rate increase for businesses and a 90 percent boost for homeowners. But as more people flock to the wind pool, its problems are compounded, and it threatens to drive away the private insurance market.
November 29, 2006
Since Hurricane Katrina, murders in Jefferson Parish have doubled, the majority of them black-on-black killings. National Public Radio reports that late last month, Harry Lee, the flamboyant and outspoken sheriff of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, made an offhand comment to a TV reporter that created a new controversy. "We know the crime is in the black community. Why should I waste time in the white community?" Lee was quoted as saying. The Chinese-American lawman, now in his seventh term in office, has a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, but it only seems to increase his popularity.
See, hear National Public Radio report
November 20, 2006
Public officials are wondering whether insurers might come back to Louisiana if the government took over the task of providing reinsurance — essentially insurance for insurance companies — and limited losses beyond a certain level through a system of federal and/or state catastrophe funds, reports The Times-Picayune. Some say it could rescue the state from its insurance crisis by providing a powerful incentive for insurers to set up shop in Louisiana. Others argue that it transfers the cost of the worst catastrophe risk from private business to taxpayers.
November 13, 2006
Political analysts say Jefferson Parish, La., voters have become increasingly important in the 2nd District congressional race between U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, and Karen Carter, a Democratic state representative from New Orleans, who are preparing for what will likely be a bruising runoff. The Times-Picayune reports that currently, Orleans Parish has about 270,000 registered voters in the 2nd District, though many may not have returned since Hurricane Katrina. Suburban Jefferson Parish has 112,000 registered voters in the district and saw about 28 percent turnout in the November race, 5 percent more than in New Orleans.
November 9, 2006
The congressman who directed the Democrats' successful campaign to win back a majority in the House of Representatives says that the Bush administration's botched early response to Hurricane Katrina played a "very big role" in his party's victory. The Times-Picayune reports that Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that Katrina was on the minds of voters even though few candidates used the hurricane as an issue in ads. It came up, he said, in individual conversations on the campaign trail because "in many ways it revealed a White House that was both out of touch on the issue of competence that was a selling point for this White House."
November 7, 2006
Saying New Orleans must diversify its tourism-dependent economy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin announced the formation Monday of a committee that will act as a liaison between city government and the technology community and as an adviser on technology-related issues. The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports that the nine-member steering committee will be a joint initiative between the city and the New Orleans-based Louisiana Technology Council, formerly known as the New Orleans Technology Council. Nagin said the venture marks a "new direction'' for the city.
November 1, 2006
The battle to represent hurricane-battered New Orleans in Congress should turn on which candidate can best help rebuild the city, but the buzz is about how $90,000 in cold hard cash ended up in incumbent Rep. William Jefferson's freezer, reports Reuters. Until the FBI found the money in May, the eight-term Democrat seemed certain to be re-elected to represent Louisiana's 2nd district, much of which lay under water after Katrina. Jefferson denies wrongdoing, but the investigation into whether he took bribes to promote business deals in Nigeria has spiced up the race. A slew of candidates are opposing him and a run-off is likely. The scandal also has complicated Democrats' efforts to cast the GOP as the party of corruption and has raised questions about whether Jefferson can keep voters loyal in a state with a history of tolerating politicians' graft.
October 31, 2006
Massive chunks of concrete debris are hardly a final solution to saving Mississippi's eroding coastline, but it's a good start, according to U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor. The Mississippi Democrat and officials from the state Department of Marine Resources boarded a boat Monday to check the status of several projects in which Katrina-related rubble is being used to protect the coast from future storms or angry seas, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. Since Katrina, Taylor's office has worked with local governments to store concrete refuse until it can be used for environmental projects, such as building a breakwater in Bayou Caddy and replenishing inshore fish and oyster reefs.
New Orleans is paying dearly for a Metairie company to inspect electrical work at renovated homes across the city as City Hall's permit department remains a skeleton crew 14 months after Hurricane Katrina, city officials said Monday. Still, nothing ensures that every electrical contractor is obeying the codes while working to rebuild neighborhoods in a city where construction jobs remain a cash cow for anyone with a license, City Council members were told at a Housing Committee meeting, according to The Times-Picayune.
October 27, 2006
The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity. According to The New York Times, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light. But four former I.R.S. commissioners, who served under presidents of both parties, said that doing so because of an election was improper and indefensible.
October 20, 2006
A Louisiana state panel endorsed plans Thursday to offer health care to everyone in Hurricane Katrina-devastated greater New Orleans — amid warnings that without more federal aid soon, few doctors and nurses might be left to deliver the care, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. The Louisiana Health Care Redesign Collaborative ratified a 67-page document laying out its vision for universal access and managed care. No one on the panel voted against sending the plan to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt so that talks on a final agreement can begin between federal and state government officials. Leavitt wants to use federal aid for the poor, which has largely gone to the state-run charity hospital system, to purchase private insurance for the uninsured.
Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., laid out a wide-ranging legislative plan Thursday for the federal government to deal with disasters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, hitting hard on the need to reform the insurance industry, according to The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The Katrina Task Force, chaired by Taylor with Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., as vice chairman, was formed by the Democratic congressional leadership to develop proposals the Democrats hoped to become a blueprint for action — especially if the Democrats take control of the House in November's elections. The report's first finding is that the relationship between the insurance companies and the National Flood Insurance Program needs to be investigated.
October 19, 2006
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is locking horns with President Bush because he struck a provision that would have required the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to have emergency preparedness management experience, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. Landrieu sent a letter to Bush, saying the Senate in recent legislation intended to "protect against further mistakes such as those that plagued the 2005 hurricane response." Last year, former FEMA head Michael Brown was removed from the job for his handling of Hurricane Katrina; he had no real emergency preparedness experience when he joined the agency.
October 12, 2006
Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, a Republican and former majority leader, is one of thousands of homeowners on the Gulf Coast who have been fighting with their insurers over payments for damage in Hurricane Katrina. He said he inserted a provision into legislation, signed by President Bush last week, directing the Department of Homeland Security to investigate potential fraud by the insurance industry, reports The New York Times. Lott said he was also drafting legislation to challenge the industry's exemptions from antitrust laws and had asked his staff to investigate the industry's tax rates. Lott's claim for the loss of his $400,000 house in Pascagoula was rejected by State Farm.
September 21, 2006
Congress ordered the nation's disaster planners Wednesday to make sure that pets don't get left behind in the next catastrophe. Reacting to reports of Hurricane Katrina victims refusing to leave New Orleans without their dogs, cats and birds, Congress passed legislation requiring state and local governments to draw up plans for evacuating and sheltering pets in a disaster, reports The Times-Picayune. The legislation, which received final congressional approval Wednesday, also gave FEMA the authority to finance shelter renovations to house pets on a temporary basis.
September 13, 2006
U.S. Senate action on legislation to overhaul the National Flood Insurance Program and offset huge debts caused by Hurricane Katrina payouts is being stalled by opposition from Louisiana's two senators, who prefer provisions in a bill passed by the House. The Times-Picayune reports that Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter expressed concern about several provisions in the bill approved in May by the Senate Banking Committee, including one that would allow a 25 percent annual increase in insurance premiums for severe repetitive loss properties, business properties and second homes until the policyholders are paying market rates. The House bill provides for only 15 percent annual increases and doesn't apply to repetitive loss properties.
September 8, 2006
State and federal criminal justice officials united in delivering a message Thursday that they will show "zero tolerance" for illegal abuses of Louisiana's Road Home home-rebuilding grant program and that thumbprint identifications will be taken for all applicants to help stem fraud. The Times-Picayune reports that the approach is a collaborative effort among federal and state officials that encourages citizens to report fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement of money from the federally financed $10 billion pool. State Attorney General Charles Foti said the dishonest practices targeted by the measure include contractors defrauding homeowners or dishonest homeowners filing false claims for assistance.
September 7, 2006
At a time when Louisiana residents are intensely concerned with insurance issues, the biggest challenge for the three candidates running for state insurance commissioner might be getting voters to pay attention to the Sept. 30 primary race, according to The Times-Picayune. The election was called by Gov. Kathleen Blanco to fill the unexpired term of Robert Wooley, who resigned in February to take a lobbyist job with a law firm. Two Republicans and a Libertarian have about three weeks to get their messages to voters still distracted by cleanups from last year's hurricanes and the occasional threats from this season's storms. Concerns about costs, coverage and keeping insurance companies writing policies in the state will strongly shape the debate.
September 6, 2006
The owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home, arrested in the deaths of 34 patients who perished in Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, are suing the government, saying federal, state and local officials failed to make sure vulnerable citizens were evacuated as the storm approached. The Los Angeles Times reports that the lawsuit, filed last week, names the Army Corps of Engineers, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Atty. Gen. Charles C. Foti Jr. and numerous other authorities and agencies.
August 31, 2006
Katrina fatigue erupted into anger and frustration Wednesday night, as more than 1,700 residents urged Mayor Bill White to send evacuees home to New Orleans. The Houston Chronicle reports that one year after the city of Houston welcomed at least 250,000 evacuees, more than 100,000 New Orleans natives still remain. West Houston residents who gathered Wednesday at Grace Presbyterian Church to address increases in violent crime over the past year in their community said evacuees are to blame.
August 24, 2006
Hurricane Katrina knocked out most of the towers for cell phones and radio systems used by state and local agencies. Yet even if the equipment had kept working, it would have been impossible to connect with many other emergency crews out on the water that night, The Associated Press reports. A year later, rescuers and relief workers along the Gulf Coast are more likely to be able to communicate with one another during a crisis than they were after Katrina. But despite the patchwork measures taken to help avert a repeat of last year's debacle — itself a repeat of communications failures on Sept. 11, 2001 — political turf battles still threaten to create a Tower of Babel any time there's an emergency requiring a response from more than one of the nation's 60,000 public safety entities.
August 11, 2006
The head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who in June admitted that design flaws in the levees his agency built to protect New Orleans caused most of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina, has asked to retire, the Army said on Thursday. In an after-hours announcement, the Army issued a statement saying Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander and chief engineer of the corps, had requested his retirement from the military "based on family and personal reasons," Reuters reports. The announcement came a bit more than two months after the corps issued a 6,100-page report admitting to its blunders in the design of storm walls and earthen levees that were supposed to protect the New Orleans area.
July 11, 2006
Accompanied by a warning that protecting New Orleans and the Louisiana coast from major hurricanes would cost "double-digit billions of dollars" and take decades to accomplish, the Bush administration and the Army Corps of Engineers on Monday submitted to Congress an interim protection report that includes no recommendations for specific projects. The decision to leave individual projects out of the interim Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration report in favor of language on how future projects would be chosen was immediately criticized by high-ranking officials from the state, reports The Times-Picayune. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana asked Sen. Pete Domenici, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Water, for a hearing to investigate why the administration changed the report that was being agreed to by local corps officials and the state. Meanwhile, Gov. Kathleen Blanco demanded that the corps submit to Congress the five major projects recommended by the state for initial authorization. (Report link under Government Data)
July 7, 2006
The Louisiana Recovery Authority on Thursday allocated $500 million in block grant money to help leverage billions of dollars in federal spending on infrastructure torn up by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Most of the money will be matched to Federal Emergency Management Agency repair money. The LRA move will ensure that billions will be spent on repairing water treatment systems, port facilities, airports, highways and public schools. But use of the money faces a hurdle in parishes that have not yet adopted recommended flood-elevation standards advised by FEMA, according to The Times-Picayune. FEMA expects strict compliance with the advisories, and LRA officials generally back the standard, said LRA Executive Director Andy Kopplin.
The New Orleans City Council on Thursday asked the Louisiana Recovery Authority and FEMA for hard and fast deadlines on when it must adopt federal advisory flood maps, as well as for clarification of how its vote would affect homeowners' ability to buy flood insurance and receive federal rebuilding grants. The request was another nudge in the ongoing scrap between city, state and federal officials over how the flow of federal aid through the LRA's Road Home program could be hampered if local governments refuse to fold the "advisory base flood elevation" maps into their building codes, reports The Times-Picayune.
June 30, 2006
The government will keep covering the full cost of clearing the bulk of Hurricane Katrina wreckage in the Gulf Coast for the rest of the year, the White House said Thursday. A program that reimburses states and cities for all their bills was to end June 30, reports The Associated Press. That would have shifted 10 percent of the cost away from Washington. An estimated 20 million cubic yards of wreckage still litters New Orleans and Mississippi waterways, according to the most recent Federal Emergency Management Agency data available.
As New Orleans rebuilds tens of thousands of homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, FEMA has recommended rebuilding at levels below last year's floods, reigniting a debate about how the levee-ringed city can be rebuilt safely. If buildings are rebuilt too low, most of the money spent on construction could be wasted, while a level too high would be costly for the cash-strapped city, according to Reuters. FEMA, widely criticized for its response to Katrina last year, published preliminary rebuilding height guidelines earlier this month based on its model for a 100-year flood. Katrina and Rita led the agency to re-examine its previous flood maps, but researchers ruled out using either storm as the basis for the 100-year hurricane model.
June 26, 2006
Ten months after Hurricane Katrina exposed failures at all levels of government, Congress is seeking to avert another debacle the next time the country faces a catastrophic natural disaster or terrorist attack — and its focus is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The public debate has centered on calls to take FEMA out of the Department of Homeland Security and allow it to again report directly to the president, reports The Washington Post. The White House opposes such a move. Experts say the argument obscures older, deeper problems that undermine the nation's preparedness.
June 16, 2006
With the U.S. Senate and President Bush giving final approval to billions of dollars in federal spending for hurricane recovery in Louisiana, officials said they will launch new outreach efforts to sign up homeowners who haven't yet registered for the state's Road Home housing program and hope to begin issuing checks by midsummer. The Times-Picayune reports that money in the emergency supplemental spending bill will help finance the program, which is designed to reimburse homeowners as much as $150,000 for their uninsured, uncompensated damages to repair, rebuild or relocate.
June 14, 2006
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin visited Chicago as part of a national tour in which he's calling on "partners" to help rebuild his hurricane-ravaged city, a project he estimated could take seven to 10 years. During a speech at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's national conference in Rosemont, Ill., Nagin criticized the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and his state's handling of recent municipal elections, according to the Chicago Tribune.
June 13, 2006
A bill that could make Louisiana the first state in the nation with a hurricane evacuation plan for cats and dogs won approval Monday in a House committee, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. The legislation is a response to complaints from animal lovers that thousands of cats and dogs died needlessly after Hurricane Katrina.
June 12, 2006
Calling it a lesson learned from Hurricane Katrina, the House Financial Services Housing Subcommittee has approved a bill designating the Department of Housing and Urban Development as the lead agency for handling long-term housing needs resulting from major disasters, according to CongressDaily. The bill makes several other changes to federal disaster-declaration law aimed at easing the Gulf Coast's recovery from Katrina, such as allowing only three trailers per site after a disaster to avoid crowded trailer parks like those set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and allowing disaster victims to decline a trailer without losing eligibility for other assistance.
May 26, 2006
The Homeland Security Department would lose jurisdiction over the National Disaster Medical System under a bill approved Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, CongressDaily reports. The bill calls for removing the National Disaster Medical System from the purview of Homeland Security within nine months. The measure places the system, which helps coordinate the federal response to major health and medical emergencies, back under the purview of the Health and Human Services Department, undoing a shift made in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The bill also seeks to defend against future jurisdictional incursions by codifying into law that HHS serves as the primary agency for addressing national health emergencies and disasters. "The things we saw on the ground in the wake of [Hurricane] Katrina really underscored why we need to move that function back to [HHS]," said Rep Michael Burgess, R-Texas.
Owners of vacation homes and properties that repeatedly get high water would see a sharp spike in their flood insurance premiums under a bill approved Thursday by a Senate committee that is racing to overhaul the financially troubled program as another hurricane season approaches. With images still fresh of New Orleans' ruptured levees last year, the bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., also would require homeowners behind levees and dams to buy insurance policies even if they aren't within the traditional 100-year flood plain. Shelby's bill would immediately require owners of vacation homes, investment property and businesses to pay fair market rates for their flood insurance. The bill would phase out subsidies for homes whose flood damage exceeds their fair market value and so-called "repetitive loss" properties that have filed four or more claims, The Times-Picayune reports.
May 24, 2006
Concerned that vital flood-control and hurricane protection work will be stalled because of failure to pass a water bill that includes the projects, all seven members of Louisiana’s House delegation introduced federal legislation Tuesday that would authorize what they describe as critical projects in Louisiana. Louisiana lawmakers complain that they are sometimes put in a Catch-22 situation, as colleagues in Congress tell them that their proposed projects have merit but can't move without authorization. Authorization, in many cases, has been delayed because Congress is now four years late in passing a new Water Resources Development Act, which authorizes key national Army Corps of Engineers projects, according to The Times-Picayune.
After getting knocked on its heels by the surprising success of post-Katrina insurance overhaul bills in the Louisiana Senate, the insurance industry has regrouped and launched a formidable coalition for a House fight against proposals it says would make it harder for homeowners and businesses to find coverage. The House Insurance Committee today is expected to vote on at least two of the most significant proposals, both of which are in reaction to insurance controversies in Hurricane Katrina's wake, reports The Times-Picayune. Louisiana already is teetering on the brink of a massive shortage of insurance coverage because of both the historical and recently demonstrated risk from storms, and these bills could worsen the situation, according to the Coalition to Insure Louisiana. Proposals opposed by the coalition include Senate Bill 693, which would restore the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission’s authority to decide on premium price changes of an average of 10 percent of less; and Senate Bill 707 and House Bill 1358, which would impose fewer restrictions on courts when deciding the meaning of “bad faith” in lawsuits disputing the settling or adjusting of claims.
May 22, 2006
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin was re-elected Saturday in what many considered an improbable victory, overcoming a ceaseless barrage of criticism stemming from the chaos of Hurricane Katrina and the stalled recovery. The Washington Post reports that in addition to the frustrations of post-hurricane New Orleans, Nagin had to fend off a strong challenge by Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the scion of a politically powerful clan, who outspent him by large a margin. Surrounded by throngs of cheering supporters, Nagin acknowledged the antagonism he has aroused since Katrina and, to the surprise of many in the room, thanked President Bush. He cited the billions of dollars for housing and levee construction that Bush has supported, and then urged unity: "This election is over, and it is time for this community to start the healing process."
May 19, 2006
Nearly nine months after Hurricane Katrina, PBS' NOW returns to New Orleans to talk to residents hit hard by the storm about who they believe will be the best man to run the beleaguered city as mayor. With as many homes and businesses still in ruins, reconstruction is the core issue of the runoff between incumbent C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Just ahead of the election, NOW looks at how far New Orleans has come and her tough road ahead with a new hurricane season just around the corner.
May 18, 2006
Two House committees approved competing proposals to revamp the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday, reflecting the uncertainty over the future of the troubled disaster-response organization criticized for its disorganized response to Hurricane Katrina. Reuters reports that the Transportation Committee voted unanimously to turn FEMA back into an independent agency reporting directly to the president, but the Homeland Security Committee passed a plan that would strengthen it while keeping it within the Department of Homeland Security.
The next hurricane like Katrina will be met with earlier, quicker deployments of supplies and military units, according to The Times-Picayune. That's the forecast as adjutant generals from 12 states met with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and state and federal homeland security officials Wednesday to plan emergency responses designed to deploy National Guard and, if necessary, federal military units to disaster areas sooner and with better coordination than after Katrina. Blanco said the plan calls for better and more unified performance among the various agencies for evacuations, hospital services, access to food and water, rescue, law enforcement and transportation. Among the planners' assumptions is that the governor will keep command of National Guard forces from Louisiana and other states, just as she did after Katrina even though the White House was pressuring her to turn her authority over to a general under the president's command.
May 17, 2006
White voters remain a minority in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, but they may decide who leads this city through its critical recovery years, according to data from the mayoral primary. Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who is black, and his opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who is white, are competing for the more than 60 percent of white voters who didn't vote for either of them, TODAY reports. In the last days before the runoff election Saturday, they are campaigning in majority white neighborhoods and scooping up endorsements from white "also-rans" from the primary. Katrina reduced the city's population from 450,000 to fewer than 200,000 and in the process narrowed the racial gap. This formerly two-thirds-black city is now closer to 50-50, says pollster Silas Lee. The focus on white voters is a turnabout from the primary election, when the 22 candidates made history by holding debates in cities such as Houston and Atlanta, home to many black hurricane evacuees.
Incumbent Mayor C. Ray Nagin tried to paint his challenger in the race for New Orleans mayor as the candidate backed by big money and old-line politics in a nationally televised debate Tuesday on MSNBC, reports The Associated Press. Successful fundraising by Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu’s campaign “could be because they don’t think you’re effective,” he shot back at Nagin during one exchange. The nationally televised debate was the second such forum in the mayoral race. The 24-hour cable news network also aired similar debate with some of the candidates in the April primary. The election Saturday has garnered wider national attention than most city elections because the winner will oversee one of the largest reconstruction projects in U.S. history.
Louisiana consumers have until Aug. 29, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to resolve their storm-related homeowners and business insurance claims unless state lawmakers pass legislation putting off the deadline for another year, reports The Times-Picayune. Most insurance policies carry a one-year statute of limitations, which means policyholders have up to a year after the loss to file any lawsuits disputing their settlement. Once that date passes, it's hard for consumers to negotiate for more money because insurance companies know their policyholders have no legal recourse. The one-year deadline isn't usually a source of contention. But the scope of Katrina's devastation, as well as 24-hour curfews that prevented families and adjusters from accessing some properties for weeks after the storm, slowed down the insurance process. In addition, many policyholders waited for FEMA to come out with its latest flood map advisory — released last month — before beginning to rebuild. And many others continue to wait for grants the Louisiana Recovery Authority has said it will make available to homeowners.
May 16, 2006
New Orleans’ thousands of displaced residents, virtually ignored by the candidates since the primary election for mayor last month, nonetheless appear set to play a significant role in Saturday's runoff vote. Election officials say that if current trends continue all week, the share of the vote by evacuees in the runoff will be larger than in last month's primary, according to The New York Times. New requests for ballots are streaming in daily. About 8,400 people have mailed in ballots, and nearly a week remains for such votes to be counted; the total for mail ballots in the primary was 11,000. In addition, some 12,000 people have already voted at early voting centers around the state.
May 15, 2006
If ever there was a moment for the obscure federal flood insurance program to ride to the rescue, it would seem to have been in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reports The New York Times. But nearly half the victims did not even have flood insurance —claims from homeowners who were insured, $25 billion worth, bankrupted the program. And the government has had to commit $15 billion in additional taxpayer money for rebuilding in Louisiana and Mississippi. Though experts foresee a generation of fiercer and more frequent storms, Congress seems unlikely to make more than modest changes when it takes up the program in the coming weeks. The drive to restructure the perennially underfinanced program has been blocked by real estate interests, who worry that requiring millions more people to buy flood insurance would stifle development, and also by lawmakers from areas that rarely flood who see their constituents as supporting those who are frequently flooded, particularly in the South.
Six days before New Orleanians will decide who will lead their ravaged city, the two candidates for mayor differed Sunday over whether the campaign has put some aspects of the reconstruction program on hold, The Times-Picayune reports. While claiming that the plan to rebuild New Orleans "is still moving forward," Mayor C. Ray Nagin on Sunday said that his re-election campaign has forced him to delay some actions, such as establishing a financial-oversight structure and lining up appointments for a national recovery committee. "We'll do that on the Monday after the election," he said. Although the massive job of repairing Hurricane Katrina-related damage depends on federal money, opponent, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said, certain actions require neither money nor approval from the state or federal government — among them establishing a financial-oversight structure and working with neighborhood planning groups.
Biloxi City Council members could decide as soon as Tuesday whether to adopt advisory elevation levels developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency — or come up with an alternative, reports The Clarion-Ledger. If approved, FEMA's advisory levels would require new and reconstructed buildings in the city's flood zones to be raised as high as 25 feet above sea level. Some council members, however, are pushing for a plan that would raise the city's current 13-foot building requirement to 16 feet above sea level in flood zones. Biloxi is among the Gulf Coast's 11 cities having to raise flood elevation levels because of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Aug. 29. All Gulf Coast municipalities will have to accept FEMA's requirements to participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, which some homeowners will need to qualify for mortgages.
May 12, 2006
The federal government is better prepared for this year's hurricane season — and local officials, companies and individuals should be just as ready, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday. More than eight months after his department stumbled badly in its response to Hurricane Katrina and the devastating floods in and around New Orleans, Chertoff told USA TODAY that federal officials will be ready to step in any time lives are at stake. However, he took a hard line toward those who might not take responsibility for themselves in a disaster. State and local governments "have the principal responsibility to be the first responder," Chertoff said. "They know their people and geography best."
Candidates in the May 20 New Orleans mayoral runoff election aren't campaigning in Texas, so hurricane victims sheltered there headed home Thursday to see the candidates and, more importantly, be seen. Fifty people from Houston and dozens more from Dallas and San Antonio, headed for the hurricane-devastated city to attend a forum featuring runoff candidates C. Ray Nagin, the incumbent, and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, according to the Houston Chronicle. Both candidates visited Houston during the run-up to the 22-candidate first round of voting April 22. But not all of the campaign events in Houston were well attended.
May 11, 2006
Louisiana lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to Gov. Kathleen Blanco's $7.5 billion aid program for people whose homes were heavily damaged by Katrina and Rita, but checks can't go out until Washington officials weigh in. The Associated Press reports that Blanco needs approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the program, and the plans depend on $4.2 billion in federal aid pending in Congress. The housing program would spend federal recovery dollars on repairs, rebuilding and buyouts for homeowners. Homeowners aren't expected to see any grants until at least late summer. Homeowners must have uninsured hurricane damage of more than $5,200 — an estimated 123,000 people are expected to be eligible.
Spurred by dozens of deaths in south Louisiana nursing homes that failed to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina, a state Senate committee agreed Wednesday to let the state take a more active role in overseeing future evacuations, reports The Times-Picayune. A compromise bill that cleared the Senate Health and Welfare Committee would require nursing homes to beef up emergency plans and submit them to the state for approval by Aug. 1, but also calls for the state to serve in a backup role in case the arrangements made by nursing homes fall through. The bill was crafted in weeks of backstage negotiations between Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration and the nursing home industry, which came into the current legislative session with starkly different visions of how future evacuations should be handled. Nursing home representatives had been pushing for the state to assume much of the cost and responsibility for moving residents, while the state Department of Health and Hospitals was proposing to assume new oversight duties while leaving nursing homes in charge of carrying out their own emergency plans.
May 10, 2006
The House Homeland Security Committee is weighing a legislative proposal aimed at bolstering the Federal Emergency Management Agency rather than dismantling it as the panel's Senate counterpart has recommended, according to GovExec.com. A Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation rapped FEMA officials for mismanagement, waste and susceptibility to fraud after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, and recommended the agency be renamed and reorganized. In contrast, the House panel said the agency needs a direct line to the White House and more staff, but not a complete overhaul.
May 8, 2006
Early voting for the New Orleans mayoral runoff election starts today under a seemingly more cordial atmosphere than during the historic post-Katrina primary last month, reports The Times-Picayune. Voters can cast early ballots in person today through Saturday in New Orleans and at 10 satellite polling locations across Louisiana. More than 12,000 voters cast early ballots leading up to the primary, as several civil rights groups unsuccessfully sought to defer the election and Secretary of State Al Ater predicted that its legitimacy would almost surely be challenged in court. However, those groups have shifted their focus from legal fights to wary cooperation with state election officials.
May 4, 2006
New Orleans city council members grilled a FEMA official Wednesday, insisting they have done everything in their power to push the city's recovery forward while battling the agency’s bureaucracy and closeted planning of Mayor C. Ray Nagin. For more than an hour, Mark Misczak, who identified himself as a "human services branch director" for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, fielded questions, The Times Picayune reports. The queries initially focused on housing issues, but eventually morphed into a litany of complaints on issues ranging from the exclusion of local companies from FEMA contracts and the slow pace of Entergy repairs to the precarious position that people still living in trailers will be in this hurricane season. Citing reports that FEMA was closing its long-range planning office in New Orleans because neither the city nor the state could create a timely recovery plan, council members railed against the agency for deserting desperate citizens. However, Misczak said that was not the case and that perhaps confusion arose over location, not intent; FEMA is not shuttering its New Orleans operation, he said, but is simply moving a small piece of it under another roof.
May 2, 2006
Homing in on New Orleans’ limping recovery from Hurricane Katrina, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu repeatedly attacked Mayor C. Ray Nagin Monday night in a series of sharp exchanges, as the two met in their first debate before the May 20 mayoral runoff election, reports The New York Times. Landrieu, who finished second in the primary vote, criticized Mr. Nagin for failing to remove trash and flooded cars from the streets of the city not organizing neighborhood planning. He also said New Orleans had been "crippled nationally" because Nagin's outbursts had lost him "credibility" in the eyes of decision-makers elsewhere. Nagin portrayed his opponent as too tied to his famous political family —Landrieu's sister is a United States senator and his father was the last white mayor of New Orleans — and to what he called "the politics of the past."
With voter turnout down in many flood-ravaged wards and up in relatively undamaged areas, residents of neighborhoods like the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans could see an erosion of political clout, according to a Brown University study released Monday. As expected, Katrina's population displacement also depressed overall voter turnout and shifted the racial demographics of the electorate, The Times-Picayune reports. But the shift in the voting power of different neighborhoods could have more impact in the city's new political landscape, where neighborhood issues reign over all others, said Brown sociologist John Logan.
April 28, 2006
Congress and the White House are headed toward a collision over one of the big questions left unresolved in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — whether to beef up the Federal Emergency Management Agency within the Department of Homeland Security or to create an independent agency to handle national emergencies, reports the Los Angeles Times. “FEMA is discredited, demoralized and dysfunctional. It is beyond repair. Just tweaking the organizational chart will not solve the problem," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, whose Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recommended Thursday that it be dismantled and reconstituted as a new, stronger agency within Homeland Security. Many House members are pushing instead to restore FEMA to independent agency status outside the department, while the White House urged a strengthening — but no reshuffling — of current operations.
Facing renewed criticism of his administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush signaled Thursday while in New Orleans that his administration was listening to its critics. "All of us in positions of responsibility appreciate those who are working to help us to understand how to do our jobs better," Bush said during his visit to the heavily damaged Lower Ninth Ward. His trip was planned to highlight the progress of rebuilding efforts on the Gulf Coast and, this being National Volunteer Week, the role volunteers have played in them, according to The New York Times. But it came on a day that a bipartisan Senate panel’s report called the Federal Emergency Management Agency the living "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy."
April 27, 2006
Hurricane Katrina exposed flaws in the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security that are "too substantial to mend," and FEMA should be dismantled and rebuilt inside the troubled department, according to the final report by Senate investigators. The report, to be released to key senators today and to the public next week, makes 86 recommendations that would undo major changes made when President Bush and Congress launched the department in 2003, and would reverse parts of a reorganization ordered by Secretary Michael Chertoff last summer. According to a summary released to the media, it stops short of restoring FEMA to independent, Cabinet-level status, but would promote its chief to confer directly with the president in a crisis, The Washington Post reports.
The Louisiana Recovery Authority on Wednesday unanimously approved the final draft of its $7.5 billion plan to help homeowners rebuild hurricane-ruined houses, as Gov. Kathleen Blanco and lawmakers announced that they have worked out their differences over the proposal, The Times-Picayune reports. The coalition of legislators supporting the proposal, which included Republicans and members of the Legislative Black Caucus who had been critical of the plan, suggested that the "Road Home" housing program will not encounter significant opposition when considered by the Legislature next week. If approved, the proposal will head to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for final consideration.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said on Wednesday he had settled a fight with U.S. disaster officials over trailer parks in the city, giving hope to people still seeking temporary housing months after Hurricane Katrina, according to Reuters. Earlier this month, Nagin ordered a halt to all new trailer sites around town after a contractor working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency clashed with residents opposed to one development. He also urged Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff to fire the FEMA team in charge of the program. But Nagin said he rescinded the order following a meeting with Chertoff in New Orleans last week, where the two sides agreed on alternative sites and standards of conduct, allowing more people displaced by Katrina to find housing.
April 26, 2006
President Bush asked Congress yesterday for $2.2 billion in new spending to rebuild the hurricane protection system for the New Orleans area, even as he threatened to veto the overall spending bill if Congress did not remove a cornucopia of non-emergency items. In an unusually blunt message to Senate leaders, the White House demanded that lawmakers eliminate $14 billion in domestic provisions and "remain focused on urgent national priorities," The New York Times reports. The flood protection money, added to a request already before Congress for $1.4 billion for rebuilding the levees, would be used to replace 36 miles of flood walls around the city with higher walls of a stronger design. It is part of a $19.8 billion request from the administration for work in Louisiana in a $106 billion emergency spending bill that was originally intended for the Iraq war and hurricane recovery.
Arguing that Hurricane Katrina's devastation has given Louisiana a unique opportunity to redesign its broken health care system from scratch, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt promised the full support of his office Tuesday to help the state create "the finest health system in the world." Addressing a joint House-Senate health-care committee, Leavitt challenged state officials to come up with a redesign plan that allows everyone in New Orleans to have a "medical home" and that focuses more on primary and preventive care than emergency services, reports The Times-Picayune.
April 25, 2006
A top federal official ignited controversy Monday when he said overtopped rather than breached levees accounted for much of the water that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. A federal investigation due out in June will say just that, Dan Hitchings, director of Task Force Hope for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, told a House committee. But his comment was disputed moments later by a Louisiana State University professor in charge of the state’s investigation of what happened to the levees: “Eighty-seven percent of all water that got into New Orleans was because of levee breaches,” Ivor L. van Heerden told the House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works.
Legal protests about potential voter disenfranchisement were still trickling in hours before New Orleans’ polls opened for Saturday's primary, reports The Times-Picayune. So it's no wonder that the analyses Monday came along with a slew of promises that new complaints will be filed on behalf of displaced residents who could not vote. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who for months has railed against the Legislature's refusal to set up out-of-state polling places in such evacuee strongholds as Houston and Atlanta, offered the most high-profile vow: to protest the federal court-approved balloting allowances — such as voting by fax and at Louisiana satellite locations — which Jackson said did not fulfill requirements set forth in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
April 24, 2006
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin may have led Saturday's mayoral election, but he now faces a popular and better-financed opponent on a political landscape utterly changed by Hurricane Katrina, one in which the long-running dominance of the city's black vote has been significantly reduced. Black residents, whose neighborhoods were the most devastated by the storm, voted in much smaller numbers than whites did — even more so than usual, according to The New York Times. As a result, most of the votes here were cast against Nagin, who is black, even though he came out on top with 38 percent of the vote. If that trend holds, New Orleans could elect its first white mayor in nearly 30 years in a runoff election when he faces Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who got 29 percent of the vote in a crowded field.
April 21, 2006
Concerned that thousands of residents are doing nothing to fix up their flooded homes, the New Orleans City Council voted Thursday to set Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina's first anniversary, as the deadline for people to clean, gut and board up their homes — or risk having the city seize and demolish them. The ordinance was introduced by Councilman Jay Batt, who said ravaged, mold-infested houses, especially if not boarded up, can become "environmental biohazards" that will slow the recovery of whole neighborhoods by discouraging nearby owners from moving back or making repairs, reports The Times-Picayune.
As the June 1 start of hurricane season approaches, many New Orleans residents are determined to be more self-sufficient than they were when Katrina struck, because they think authorities failed them. Few of the candidates in Saturday's mayoral election have outlined a specific pre-hurricane evacuation plan, although most of them the city is not prepared for another monster storm, reports the Los Angeles Times.
On the eve of New Orleans mayoral election — one of the most unusual for a major city in U.S. history — it comes down to this. The black incumbent and two white challengers are locked in a tight contest with race playing a dominant role, according to The Christian Science Monitor. The outcome is unpredictable. About the only thing that political observers agree on is that a run-off election looks inevitable.
See Christian Science Monitor article
April 20, 2006
New Orleans will enter the hurricane season in six weeks without important pieces of its storm protection, not because Congress is dragging its feet, but because the Army Corps of Engineers is waiting for congressional authorization that it already has, Sen. David Vitter told corps officials Tuesday. The Louisiana Republican said critical projects such as armoring levees and moving pumping stations to the lakefront could have begun under an emergency financing bill passed last year that included broad authorization to cover any flood-control repair work, reports The Times-Picayune.
April 17, 2006
There may be no more desolate electoral battleground than New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward, the hardest-hit section in a city of hard-hit neighborhoods that were ruined when Hurricane Katrina burst New Orleans' floodwalls Aug. 29, reports the Chicago Tribune. Yet it is here, among the endless vistas of crushed and rotting homes that used to constitute New Orleans' oldest black neighborhood, where the contest to choose this struggling city's next mayor could be decided. The handful of voters who have returned to begin rebuilding their houses, and the many more who have not, will be key to Mayor C. Ray Nagin's hopes of holding onto his job when the black mayor faces off against two big-name white challengers and 20 others in an election next Saturday.
April 13, 2006
Emergency officials from hurricane-stricken states appealed to the nation's homeland security chief Wednesday for help preparing for the upcoming storm season, seeking plans for everything from evacuation routes to pet protection, reports The Associated Press. The requests underscored what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described as a "great wake-up call" for state and local authorities following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Chertoff, attending an annual hurricane preparedness conference in Orlando, said the federal government should not be considered the first line of defense during disasters. But he acknowledged that parts of the Katrina-battered Gulf Coast would need more aggressive federal aid in readying for the June 1 start of the hurricane season.
April 12, 2006
Making good on last week's confrontational promise, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has formally suspended group trailer sites citywide and asked the federal government to find alternative solutions to the city's desperate housing crunch and to replace its local housing team, reports The Times-Picayune. Meanwhile, FEMA officials are investigating the legality and weight of Nagin's directive, calling it confusing and counterproductive. On April 5, Nagin issued an executive order suspending for one year approval of group trailer sites except those at which construction is under way or where residents are in the midst of leasing their units.
April 11, 2006
Multibillion-dollar hurricane recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast are plagued by bloated costs and waste, with too many contractors getting a piece of the action, lawmakers said at a hearing on Monday. Reuters reports that Louisiana legislators frustrated by the slow pace of recovery have accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Army Corps of Engineers of spearheading a flawed rebuilding process with little transparency and contractor oversight.
Louisiana Rep. Richard Baker, the Republican congressman who drafted a hurricane recovery plan torpedoed by the Bush administration this year, has asked Gov. Kathleen Blanco to extend the public review period for her rebuilding proposal. Baker said that he has several critical questions about the state proposal that were heightened by the release Monday of a study of the rebuilding costs associated with his original plan, reports The Times-Picayune. He said there are not enough details in the housing proposal drafted by Blanco's Louisiana Recovery Authority, particularly on how the state plans to deal with property that is bought from homeowners who want to relocate.
The floodwaters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita disturbed hundreds of coffins, many forced from their grave sites without identifying markers to provide information about who was buried inside them, reports The Associated Press. Now, Louisiana lawmakers are considering ways to make those caskets more identifiable in case the state has another flood. The House Commerce Committee on Monday approved a bill that would require funeral homes to include some sort of ID or inscription on each casket that would list the name of the person in the coffin, the date of death and the name of the funeral home that handled the burial.
April 10, 2006
Today, nearly two weeks before the official election day, the first votes will be cast in New Orleans' unprecedented mayoral contest that is taking place among an electorate dispersed around the country, reports NBC News. Voters meeting certain registration qualifications can cast their ballots for one of more than 20 candidates at 10 satellite absentee polling stations set up around Louisiana.
April 7, 2006
Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is negotiating a consulting contract with St. Bernard Parish, the area in New Orleans hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina, Bloomberg News reports. Katrina spawned floodwaters that inundated the low-lying community between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico for two weeks after its Aug. 29 landfall. The storm claimed 129 lives and destroyed 26,000 homes there. Parish leaders expressed confidence in Brown's ability to help them compete more effectively with large communities for federal funding and speed a recovery they say has been mired in bureaucratic red tape.
April 6, 2006
In the closest thing yet to a mea culpa, the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged Wednesday that a "design failure" led to the breach of the 17th Street Canal levee that flooded much of the city during Hurricane Katrina, reports The Times-Picayune. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock told a Senate committee that the corps neglected to consider the possibility that floodwalls atop the 17th Street Canal levee would lurch away from their footings under significant water pressure and eat away at the earthen barriers below.
April 5, 2006
Spurred by its chairman, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday adopted provisions that would add about $8 billion to the Bush administration's $19 billion hurricane relief request, reports The New York Times. If the extra money is added to the measure approved by the House last month, it would head off a battle over the $4.2 billion to be allocated to Louisiana for home rebuilding. Texas and Mississippi had been expected to vie for a share of those funds, but the additional relief would also help other programs and states.
Calling it a “life or death situation,” U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana announced Tuesday that she will hold up all of President Bush’s executive appointments until he commits to funding $6 billion in levee protection for her state, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. As do all senators, Landrieu has the power to place a hold on executive appointments that must be approved by the Senate. Currently, 27 appointments sit on the calendar. The Democrat sent a letter revealing her intentions to Bush on Tuesday.
April 4, 2006
As the first vote since Hurricane Katrina, the April 22 New Orleans mayoral primary was supposed to be about the critical choices facing this battered city — an issues-filled debate about whose reconstruction plan was best. Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged in the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. New Orleans has elected black mayors since 1978, and there has been little doubt about the racial identity of the eventual winner, The New York Times reports.
Relations between New Orleans and the U.S. agency in charge of funding Hurricane Katrina rebuilding hit a new low on Monday when the city demanded Washington replace a federal team for “disrespecting” citizens, reports Reuters. The demand was sparked by a weekend fracas during which security guards threatened homeowners opposed to a temporary housing site. It is the latest of several battles between the city and FEMA dating back to the devastating Aug. 29 storm. Mayor Ray Nagin said he will urge U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to replace the FEMA team in charge of setting up the travel-trailer villages that have sprung up to house residents whose homes were damaged in the hurricane.
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti threatened Monday to sue the federal government for giving the state “the runaround” on auditing financial records related to the hurricane recovery, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. FEMA has sent a $156 million bill for the state’s share of storm expenses. It is the first installment in what is expected to be a $1 billion bill. Last week, FEMA gave the state a two-month extension on paying the $156 million.
April 3, 2006
Unconvinced that the administration is serious about fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency or that there is enough time actually to get it done before President Bush's second term ends, seven candidates for director or another top FEMA job said in interviews that they had pulled themselves out of the running, The New York Times reports. Now, with the next hurricane season only two months away, the Bush administration finally has come up with a convenient — but somewhat embarrassing — solution. Bush, several former and current FEMA officials said, intends to nominate R. David Paulison, a former fire official who has been filling in for the past seven months, to take on the job permanently.
Across the nation, volunteers are searching for tens of thousands of displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors who might not have the time, motivation or know-how to register for a mail ballot for the April 22 New Orleans mayoral election. It's crucial that voters who have not yet returned to New Orleans have a say in the city's future, said Ginny Goldman, head organizer in Texas for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The Los Angeles Times reports that ACORN plans to send bus caravans to Louisiana from Houston and five other cities so that Katrina survivors can cast their votes in person.
Hurricane Katrina victims living in cramped trailers soon could be able to move into sunny little cottages with big porches that are built to withstand wind and water. USA TODAY reports that the Senate is considering an unprecedented step: allowing FEMA to provide inexpensive, permanent housing to Americans who have lost their homes to a natural disaster. The Senate Appropriations Committee, headed by Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, will consider adding money to President Bush's $19 billion request aimed at helping the Gulf Coast recover from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mississippi officials hope the panel approves funding to build 20,000 Katrina Cottages — tiny homes born of a new architectural movement that look like traditional Gulf Coast cottages.
March 31, 2006
The Bush administration said yesterday that the cost of rebuilding New Orleans's levees to federal standards has nearly tripled to $10 billion and that there may not be enough money to fully protect the entire region, reports The Washington Post. Donald E. Powell, the administration's rebuilding coordinator, said some areas may be left without the protection of levees strong enough to meet requirements of the national flood insurance program. Those areas probably would face enormous obstacles in attracting home buyers and investors willing to build there.
March 30, 2006
The cost of restoring levee protection in the New Orleans area to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels will be about $6 billion, twice as much as the Bush administration and Congress have appropriated to date, Donald Powell, the federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding, told members of the state's congressional delegation Wednesday. Powell said he wanted to update the delegation on the latest cost estimates, but he did not commit to a financing source or whether the administration would seek the traditional 35 percent local share for the work. He said that "will be part of the deliberations" in coming weeks, reports The Times-Picayune.
A Louisiana Senate committee on Wednesday rejected a bill pushed by civil rights groups to make it easier for displaced New Orleans residents to vote in the mayoral election next month. The Associated Press reports that the panel rejected a bill to create "satellite voting centers" in other states so that registered voters living elsewhere could cast ballots without traveling back to Louisiana for the April 22 election. The Rev. Jesse Jackson testified that forcing displaced voters — most of whom are black — to pay for transportation back to New Orleans amounted to a "poll tax" like those from the Jim Crow era.
March 28, 2006
Seven months after Hurricane Katrina, federal housing officials say they still haven't decided what to do with thousands of government-subsidized apartments in New Orleans that have remained shuttered since the storm, leaving former residents in a quandary about whether to return. The Times-Picayune reports that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the more than 7,000 public apartments in New Orleans, said it is holding off on decisions until its gets plans from Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco — both of whom say they are looking to HUD for some signal.
The government has slowed down in deciding whether to approve hundreds of applications for federal loans to help small businesses recover from Hurricane Katrina, a senator said Monday. The Associated Press reports that earlier this year, the government was resolving 355 cases daily; that figure has dropped to 99 cases daily. The slowdown came as 682 disaster assistance employees left the Small Business Administration, said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the agency.
If a supposedly self-supporting federal program was hemorrhaging cash while exacerbating the very problems it was designed to fix, you might think Congress would rush in to stanch the bleeding. But if the enterprise in question were the federal flood insurance program, you'd be dead wrong. Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch reports that more than six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the program's finances, members of a House committee just got around to a first attempt at reconstructive surgery. Judging by the result, they seem to have settled for a few stitches.
See Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch article
A federal judge whose own home was flooded after Hurricane Katrina has rejected pleas to delay New Orleans’ April 22 elections, saying he shared residents' "burning desire for completeness." The Associated Press reports that civil rights groups had hoped to block what would be the city's first municipal elections since Katrina, arguing that too many black residents won't be able to participate.
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A proposal to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to start a state loan program for people in Mississippi wiped out by Katrina is likely to die in the state Senate, lawmakers reported as the 2006 legislative session enters its final days. The (Biloxi) Sun Herald reports that House leaders had proposed borrowing $250 million to create a zero-interest loan program that would offer loans of up to $25,000 each. In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Tommy Robertson, R-Moss Point, doubled the amount to $500 million, but also included a "repealer" that would rescind the bill before it could take effect, ensuring the House couldn't just agree to the $500 million without further debate.
March 27, 2006
FEMA has broken its promise to reopen four multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts for Hurricane Katrina work, including three that federal auditors say wasted significant amounts of money. The Associated Press reports that officials said they awarded the four contracts last October to speed recovery efforts that might have been slowed by competitive bidding. Some critics suggested they were rewards for politically connected firms.
With less than a month left before New Orleans' first elections since Hurricane Katrina, the plan and the date for the balloting are still in dispute, reports The Associated Press. Civil rights groups were expected to return to federal court Monday to try to block the April 22 mayoral election, arguing that too many black residents scattered by Katrina will be unable to take part. The election has turned into a test of the city's — and the nation's — ability to hold an election in the midst of rebuilding a major city with more than half of the population displaced.
March 24, 2006
As Barbara Bush spent two hours championing her son's software company at a Houston middle school Thursday morning, a watchdog group questioned whether the former first lady should be allowed to channel a donation to Neil Bush's company Ignite Learning through Houston's Hurricane Katrina relief fund. The Houston Chronicle reports that some critics said donations to a tax-deductible charitable fund shouldn't benefit the Bush family. Others questioned whether the Houston Independent School District violated district policy by allowing the company to host a promotional event on campus. School officials said the event at the middle school, where Bush met with 40 educators and business leaders, did not violate policy.
March 23, 2006
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco stressed to Congress last month the importance of a statewide emergency communications system that will not break down during a hurricane. However, lawmakers were told Wednesday that her $20.3 billion budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year does not include $2.8 million needed to ensure that the southwest portion of the state stays connected in a storm, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. And Calcasieu Office of Emergency Preparedness Director Dick Gremillion said many local governments cannot afford their share of the cost for the 700 megahertz radio system that the state wants.
March 21, 2006
A House committee said Monday it would review several post-Katrina hurricane contracts for waste and abuse, citing recent concerns about limited oversight and the haste in which they were awarded, The Associated Press reports. The Government Reform Committee will hold at least one hearing in April, said Robert White, a spokesman for the panel’s chairman, Tom Davis, R-Va. Witnesses and the specific contracts that will be scrutinized have yet to be determined, White said.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin presented his plan for resuscitating the hurricane-battered city, saying residents should be allowed to rebuild anywhere — as long as they do so at their own risk, reports The Associated Press. Nagin said the city will continue issuing building permits to all comers, but warned that low-lying neighborhoods like New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward could flood again if another hurricane hits.
March 20, 2006
Long before the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, La., was shaken by Hurricane Katrina, it was notorious for its fierce political infighting, for name-calling and mudslinging, for charges and countercharges of cronyism and corruption. But accusations about matters like ticket-fixing are one thing, and allegations involving millions of federal dollars for storm recovery are quite another, The New York Times reports. In February, federal prosecutors in New Orleans began bringing witnesses before a grand jury looking into possible fraud in Kenner municipal contracts that were awarded immediately before and after the hurricane. The mayor and the entire City Council have been subpoenaed to testify, although the government has not made clear its target. Growing numbers of subpoenas may soon be issued across Louisiana, where local politics remains a blood sport and corruption has been a bad habit.
With angry tones in their voices, clergy from more than 100 cities called on Washington lawmakers to end their squabbling over $4.2 billion in federal money earmarked to rebuild hurricane-damaged housing in Louisiana, and to direct more money to evacuated residents trying to return to the New Orleans area. The Times-Picayune reports that the clergy members said Congress has moved too slowly to put money into the hands of evacuees for repairing their homes and reviving their communities.
March 17, 2006
Over the bitter objections of some black leaders, the U.S. Justice Department approved a plan Thursday for New Orleans' first elections since Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that the department still needs to approve a few polling place changes, but otherwise gave its blessing to plans to hold elections for mayor, City Council and other posts on April 22. Department officials also said they will send observers to monitor the balloting.
It took weeks of crunching data, crossing fingers and lobbying in Washington, but Louisiana officials and the Bush administration succeeded yesterday in persuading the House to approve $4.2 billion in hurricane relief that state officials say is crucial to their effort to rebuild houses and apartments ruined by last year's storms, The New York Times reports. But the House did not require that all this money be spent in Louisiana as the state's delegation and the White House had urged, leaving state officials concerned that some of the money might be claimed by Mississippi or Texas.
March 16, 2006
Michael Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, deliberately ignored a new national disaster plan and circumvented his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in trying to manage the federal response to Hurricane Katrina directly with the White House, according to a new House report. By disregarding the National Response Plan finished in 2004, Brown deprived "the nation of an opportunity to determine whether the NRP worked," the House investigation concludes in an addendum to its Feb. 15 report, "A Failure of Initiative," scheduled for release today, The Washington Post reports.
Two key lawmakers on Wednesday said government agencies need to establish partnerships with the private sector in order ensure that critical communications infrastructure is reliable and available during emergency situations. National Journal’s Technology Daily reports that Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said private entities responded faster and more effectively to Hurricane Katrina than their public counterparts at all levels of government.
March 15, 2006
Underscoring the serious housing shortage for workers here, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has announced a $1.75 billion plan to encourage landlords to repair or build apartments and houses for rent. The New York Times reports that officials hope the plan will lead to the restoration or construction of as many as 45,000 dwellings in a city with huge swaths of low-income housing left uninhabitable by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. But they emphasized that the plan was contingent on approval by Congress, which has been increasingly reluctant to give Louisiana a special hand.
The White House has rejected hurricane disaster-recovery loans at a higher rate than any other administration in the last 15 years, according to a congressional study by Democrats. The report, expected to be released Wednesday, said business and home loan approval rates averaged about 60 percent after Hurricane Andrew devastated much of south Florida in 1992. The Associated Press reports that the trend continued through the rest of President George H.W. Bush's administration and into the Clinton administration, according to Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee.
March 14, 2006
Candidates for mayor usually don't waste time stumping in other cities, much less other states. But the Los Angeles Times reports that New Orleans mayoral hopeful Mitch Landrieu was cheerfully working a Texas crowd Monday evening — the latest sign that winning the April 22 election to lead the woebegone Crescent City would require extraordinary campaign tactics. More than six months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, only about a third of the city's nearly half-million residents have returned. In fact, Houston is still housing an estimated 150,000 New Orleans residents. As a result, canvassing for votes in the mayoral race requires that, in addition to visiting the Garden District and the French Quarter, candidates hop aboard airplanes and endure long drives to reach potential voters scattered in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas and Memphis.
March 10, 2006
The flooding after Hurricane Katrina barely reached the wheels of New Orleans' voting machines. So the machines are recertified and ready to go when residents vote next month. But that's about the only bright spot in what is turning out to be one of the most complicated city elections in modern times, reports The Christian Science Monitor. More than half the voters — some 250,000 of them — are scattered around the country. Elections officials are rushing to get them absentee ballots, but many remain hard to reach. Local candidates are having to campaign as far away as Houston and Atlanta to get their message out.
See Christian Science Monitor article
March 9, 2006
Calling it "totally unacceptable" that nearly 2,000 people remain unaccounted for more than six months after Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Wednesday called on federal investigators to determine whether overly rigid governmental policies have made it harder for people to find missing family and friends. The Times-Picayune reports that some lawmakers think the Federal Emergency Management Agency, citing privacy concerns, may have contributed to the delays by refusing to provide timely information about the locations of people receiving federal disaster aid. The belief is that most of the missing people are alive.
President Bush demanded Wednesday that Congress provide Louisiana with the full $4.2 billion he has requested in housing aid for this storm-battered state, even as the House and Senate began considering whether some of that money should go to other states in the region, reports The New York Times. Visiting New Orleans after taking more criticism last week for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, Bush said he fully understood the "pain and agony" of people frustrated with the pace of reconstruction. He urged local officials to speed the removal of debris and said the federal government would rebuild the levees to provide greater flood protection.
Senators and senior government investigators on Wednesday cautioned against removing FEMA from the Homeland Security Department, saying that doing so could further rupture the nation's ability to prepare for and respond to catastrophes. Government Executive magazine’s Web site Govexec.com reports that calls have intensified in recent weeks — especially among congressional Democrats — to make FEMA an independent agency as it was before being placed in DHS in 2003.
March 8, 2006
Texas Gov. Rick Perry demanded $2.1 billion more in hurricane relief from Congress on Tuesday, complaining that the federal government has shortchanged the state after it stepped up to help Katrina victims and then was slammed by Rita. The Houston Chronicle reports that the Perry said funds that were promised for housing and educating the evacuees, as well as for helping 75,000 Southeast Texas families repair or rebuild their homes destroyed by Rita, already have been scaled back. Six months after the hurricane, Texas is home to an estimated 400,000 victims of the storm. More than 38,000 are children enrolled in the state's schools, the Republican governor said.
President Bush yesterday ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create a center for faith-based and community initiatives within 45 days to eliminate regulatory, contracting and programmatic barriers to providing federal funds to religious groups to deliver social services, the White House announced last night. Pressed both by churches that have not received privately raised Hurricane Katrina relief funds as promised and by the outpouring of help of religious groups to Gulf Coast storm victims, Bush also called on the department by September "to identify all existing barriers … that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation" of such groups in federal programs, reports The Washington Post.
March 7, 2006
If 2005 hurricane relief were a separate category in the U.S. budget, the only larger items would be defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The federal commitment in the aftermath of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma has hit $88 billion, with at least another $20 billion under consideration in Congress, The Christian Science Monitor reports. This has become the largest disaster relief effort the government has agreed to — more than the combined amount it spent for 9/11, the 2004 Florida hurricanes, the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, Calif., and 1992's Hurricane Andrew (in nominal dollars). It is equal to 20 percent of the U.S. defense budget for this fiscal year, as well as 20 percent of the $400 billion U.S. budget deficit.
See Christian Science Monitor article
The White House has defended the quality of materials being used to rebuild the levees around New Orleans, as President Bush got assurances from the Army Corps of Engineers that it was on track to restore the system by the start of hurricane season. The Associated Press reports that Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Corps, told Bush in a private briefing that 100 miles of the 169 miles of levees damaged by the Aug. 29 hurricane have been restored. Strock took issue with the findings of two teams of independent experts who said the Corps was taking shortcuts and using substandard materials, leaving large sections of the system substantially weaker than before the hurricane.
With Louisiana’s coffers flush with federal hurricane relief dollars and higher-than-expected tax revenue, Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration has proposed a record $20.3 billion state budget that spares most agencies from significant cuts and calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in new education spending. The Times-Picayune reports that the plan unveiled to a House-Senate budget committee would raise teacher pay by $1,500, double the state's spending on indigent defense and boost money to a variety of health care programs — a marked change from the doomsday predictions of deep spending cuts made in the wake of Katrina and Rita.
March 6, 2006
In a March 1 story, The Associated Press reported that federal disaster officials warned President George W. Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees in New Orleans, citing confidential video footage of an Aug. 28 briefing among U.S. officials. The Army Corps of Engineers considers a breach a hole developing in a levee rather than an overrun. The story should have made clear that Bush was warned about flood waters overrunning the levees, rather than the levees breaking.
See Associated Press article/USA TODAY blog
March 3, 2006
In the hectic, confused hours after Hurricane Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast, Louisiana's governor hesitantly but mistakenly assured the Bush administration that New Orleans' levees were intact, according to a new video obtained by the Associated Press showing briefings that day with federal officials. The timing of the levee breach has been a key issue in exhaustive reviews of failures to respond to Katrina and highlights miscommunication about the scope of the storm's damage at all levels of government.
See Associated Press article, view video footage
The release of a pre-storm video showing officials warning President Bush during a conference call that Hurricane Katrina was approaching the Gulf Coast and posed a dire threat to the city and its levees has revived a dispute the White House had hoped to put behind it: Was the president misinformed, misspoken or misleading? The Washington Post reports that to critics, it reinforces the conclusion that the government at its highest levels failed to respond aggressively enough to the danger bearing down on New Orleans. To Bush aides, the seeming conflict between Bush's public statements and the private deliberations captured on tape reflects little more than an inartful statement opponents are exploiting for political purposes.
March 2, 2006
homeland security chief that Hurricane Katrina could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to video footage. But Bush didn't ask any questions during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.” The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by the Associated Press — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.
See Associated Press article, view video footage
Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., on Wednesday introduced legislation aimed at moving more than 10,000 manufactured homes sitting idle in Hope, Ark., to hurricane victims in neighboring states. The Arkansas News Bureau reports that the new homes, ordered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house Hurricane Katrina and Rita evacuees, have been mired in red tape since arriving at the Hope Municipal Airport in October, Pryor said. The bill would waive the FEMA rule that bars manufactured homes from being placed in flood plains for the purpose of housing Katrina and Rita evacuees. The one-time waiver would protect FEMA from responsibility if the homes were to be flooded.
See Arkansas News Bureau article
March 1, 2006
On the day that Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, President Bush and a top presidential aide were worried about whether New Orleans' levees had held, according to a transcript of discussions among disaster officials on the front lines of the storm. Those concerns, expressed about midday Aug. 29, are in contrast to an image of a detached president and also to what happened later that night. That's when an official manning the federal emergency operations center held off acting on reports of levee breaches as he waited for confirmation. The transcript, obtained by The Times-Picayune, illustrates the gulf at the highest levels of government between concern for the disaster and action.
A top House Democrat released e-mails Tuesday detailing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's role in pushing a $236 million federal contract for Carnival Cruise Lines to house Hurricane Katrina victims, the Associated Press reports. In a letter, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., called on Bush to explain his role in the award of the ''lucrative contract,'' which was given to the Florida-based company without a full competitive bid process. The e-mails Waxman released were provided to Congress by Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
February 28, 2006
The Bush administration has asked Congress to pay for two huge gates in the New Orleans area to close off the navigational canals that devastated the city's Lower Ninth Ward, along with "armored" levees that would not be destroyed when water washed over the top, according to the most recent details of its spending plan. The New York Times reports that the $1.46 billion flood-control proposal is part of the administration's $19.8 billion emergency financing request that was announced this month.
The American Red Cross — castigated in a recent House report for its disorganization in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — had been warned for years that its management structure would plague future disaster response, according to documents released by a Senate panel. The Los Angeles Times reports that in a letter to the charity, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, questioned the effectiveness of its massive organizational hierarchy. After Grassley wrote the charity in December questioning the adequacy of its response to Katrina, he received dozens of letters, e-mails and phone calls from current and former Red Cross employees and volunteers. Among other things, they complained about: a lack of coordination between headquarters and workers in the field; the use of costly hotels, rather than shelters, to house volunteers; and top officials using contributions to hire consultants to buff up the organization's image.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco expressed concern Monday that language attached to the $4.2 billion that President Bush recently proposed for additional housing recovery financing in southeastern Louisiana could radically alter the landscape in New Orleans, The Times-Picayune reports. In Washington for the National Governor's Association meeting, Blanco said she is worried that restricting the housing money to "mitigation" uses could turn the worst flood-damaged sections of the city into green space, off limits to residential or commercial development.
February 24, 2006
Acknowledging the multitude of Hurricane Katrina failures, the Bush administration on Thursday advocated giving federal agencies from the Pentagon to the Department of Justice a greater role in the nation's disaster response playbook. The New York Times reports that if adopted through both legislation and executive order, the recommendations would reverse some of the steps taken after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to centralize responsibility for responding to natural disasters or terrorist attacks at the newly created Department of Homeland Security. And the plan could require the White House to play a larger coordinating role in future disasters.
February 23, 2006
The nation must revamp the way it responds to major disasters or terrorist attacks, according to a new White House report that calls for more stockpiling of emergency supplies, a better-defined role for the military and a more concerted push to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes. Prepared by Frances Fragos Townsend, President Bush's domestic security adviser, the report is scheduled to be officially released Thursday. It does not advocate removing the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security, which some members of Congress have urged, officials said Wednesday. But The New York Times reports that it does call for many other changes in how federal agencies respond to disasters.
With the entry of prominent Louisiana politician Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu into the mayoral race, the campaign issues may move beyond rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina to the root causes of this city's problems that stretch back generations, reports the Los Angeles Times. And if elected, Landrieu would be the first white mayor to hold that office since his father left the job in 1978.
Two New Orleans lawmakers do not have the right to obtain FEMA’s list of addresses for residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, a state district court judge ruled Wednesday. The Times-Picayune reports that Judge William Morvant said that because the list is not a public record, the state does not have an obligation to hand over the information. Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of state Reps. Charmaine Marchand and Cedric Richmond, both Democrats who represent New Orleans, said he expects to take the issue to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal. The lawmakers say that the list is necessary so candidates for public office can send campaign material to registered voters.
February 22, 2006
New Orleans doesn't want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work. That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have "pampered" the city's residents for too long, the Houston Chronicle reports. The news that some New Orleans City Council members weren't keen on the city's poorest residents returning home added another layer of discomfort in Houston, where local residents and elected officials alike have stretched to meet the needs of thousands of Louisiana residents in the months after Hurricane Katrina.
February 21, 2006
Eager to demonstrate a new interest in political reform, Louisiana legislators have passed a constitutional amendment consolidating the state's patronage-ridden levee boards, hoping to prove they could be trusted with Washington's money, several said. But legislators turned back another crucial goal of those pushing for change, refusing to approve a bill that would shrink New Orleans's bloated government, The New York Times reports.
February 17, 2006
After resolutely resisting critics’ attempts to alter the governor’s levee board overhaul plan, the Louisiana House gave a nearly unanimous blessing Thursday to the milestone legislation dissolving local commissions in the New Orleans area in favor of regional authorities in charge of hurricane protection, The Times-Picayune reports. Swept forward by a surge of public opinion after Hurricane Katrina in favor of changing the fragmented and parochial system of flood control in the storm-ravaged region, the two bills are intended to address Louisiana's reputation for political fiefdoms and an open door to patronage.
When Hurricane Katrina struck in August, knocking out television, phones, and computers, it was old-fashioned AM radio that kept thousands of flood-stranded people in New Orleans connected and even saved lives. Reuters reports that nearly six months later, it has turned from emergency rescue service into a powerful voice of frustration at the slow pace of recovery from the disaster and the perception that federal and state politicians have let residents down.
The two U.S. senators who produced the 2002 campaign finance overhaul law are now turning their attention to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Times-Picayune reports that Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., have tried before to pass legislation to change an agency they say sometimes builds unneeded projects that can't be justified by legitimate cost-benefit analyses, and that also at times ignores adverse environmental consequences. The failure of the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, the senators said, ought to give Congress real impetus to bring changes in 2006.
February 16, 2006
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged "many lapses" in the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina during a contentious Senate hearing Wednesday in which lawmakers slammed him for failing to properly direct disaster-response teams that "ran around like Keystone Kops." The Times-Picayune reports that one year to the day after he won unanimous Senate confirmation as Homeland Security chief, Chertoff faced both the hostile questioning from senators and the release of a House committee report that accuses his agency of being too passive in its response to the hurricane, delaying desperately needed help to stranded storm victims.
Lawmakers yesterday proposed a variety of ways to restructure the nation's disjointed disaster response system in reaction to the final House investigation of Hurricane Katrina, but the document's findings were quickly swept up in divisive election-year politics and the complex task of rebuilding the devastated Gulf Coast. The Washington Post reports that the investigation produced 90 findings and 13 areas of failure. The list was praised as comprehensive by Democrats, who had predicted a GOP whitewash and declined to participate. But they said it made few specific recommendations, such as removing Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and did not explore key White House and Pentagon decisions.
In an unexpected breakthrough in negotiations with Louisiana officials, the Bush administration announced Wednesday that the president would ask Congress for an additional $4.2 billion to help the state repair and rebuild homes battered by Katrina and Rita. The Los Angeles Times reports that federal support for housing reconstruction, which has been the subject of protracted negotiations between Washington and local officials, is considered a prerequisite for wider recovery because it opens the way for thousands of displaced people to return to New Orleans and surrounding areas.
February 15, 2006
The deaths and suffering of thousands of Hurricane Katrina's victims might have been avoided if the government had heeded lessons from the 2001 terror attacks and taken a proactive stance toward disaster preparedness, a House inquiry concludes. From President Bush on down to local officials there was largely a reactive posture to the catastrophic Aug. 29 storm — even when faced with early warnings about its deadly potential, the inquiry found. The 520-page report titled "A Failure of Initiative" was being released today as Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testifies before a Senate committee conducting a separate investigation of the government's Katrina response, the Associated Press reports.
February 14, 2006
The Bush administration yesterday acknowledged its mistakes and promised anew to re-engineer the nation's homeland security agencies in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, scrambling to contain the damage from sharp criticism by House investigators and testimony by the former head of FEMA, The Washington Post reports. The White House offensive comes as the House and Senate are nearing completion of separate investigations that will cast a harsh light on the government's response to Katrina and Bush's management of homeland security more than four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks made that task his presidency's defining theme.
A 12-day legislative session designed to show that Louisiana could speak in a unified voice on levee reform and other hurricane-recovery issues has instead disintegrated into a contentious affair in which Gov. Kathleen Blanco has proved unable to marshal support from her political allies on key initiatives. The Times-Picayune reports that in a capital where governors traditionally have worked hand-in-hand with legislative leaders, the mood this session has veered from rebellion to outright hostility. As a result, several of Blanco's proposals are languishing and some appear dead for the session.
Experts say that reforms announced by the embattled FEMA, such as having satellite tracking of trucks carrying food, bedding, and other relief supplies and creating reconnaissance teams to speed reports of disasters' effects are all well and good. But they also say that refurbishment of the bureaucracy alone may not address what a new inquiry called the root causes of the Katrina-response disaster — inattentiveness, incompetence, and lack of common sense, The Christian Science Monitor reports.
See Christian Science Monitor article
February 13, 2006
A blistering report by House investigators to be released this week is expected to say that Hurricane Katrina exposed the U.S. government's failure to learn the lessons of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as leaders from President Bush down disregarded ample warnings of the threat to New Orleans and did not execute emergency plans or share information that would have saved lives. The Washington Post reports that a draft to be released publicly Wednesday includes 90 findings of failures at all levels of government, according to a senior investigation staffer who requested anonymity because the document is not final. Titled "A Failure of Initiative," it is one of three separate reviews by the House, Senate and White House that will in coming weeks dissect the response to the nation's costliest natural disaster.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will announce wide-ranging changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency on the heels of a House report blaming government-wide ineptitude for mishandling Hurricane Katrina relief. The Associated Press reports that the reforms that Chertoff will unveil are expected to range from a full-time response force of 1,500 new employees to establishing a more reliable system to report on disasters as they unfold. They are the first steps to overhauling the nation's embattled disaster-response agency, which was overwhelmed by the Aug. 29 storm.
Michael D. Brown, the former FEMA director, has accused the Bush administration of setting the nation's disaster preparedness on a "path to failure" before Hurricane Katrina by overemphasizing the threat of terrorism, and of discounting warnings on the day the storm hit that a worst-case flood was enveloping New Orleans. The Washington Post reports that Brown called "a little disingenuous" and "just baloney" assertions by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and other top administration officials that they were unaware of the severity of the catastrophe for a day after Katrina struck on Aug. 29. Investigators say their inaction delayed the launch of federal emergency measures, rescue efforts and aid to tens of thousands of stranded New Orleans residents.
February 10, 2006
Senate Democrats investigating FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina say they have documented nearly 30 instances in which federal and local government officials gave early reports on Aug. 29 that levees had broken and that New Orleans was flooding, including one report at 8:30 a.m. the day of the storm. That information is likely to raise fresh questions about why President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were evidently unaware of the flooding until the day after the storm, CNN reports.
Hurricane Katrina created a chance to slash the city bureaucracy in New Orleans, which has two elected sheriffs, two elected clerks of court and two separate court systems, a legislative panel has voted. The Associated Press reports that the city's population has plummeted since the storm, giving critics the chance to streamline a system, stemming from the 19th century, which gives the city numerous elected positions long seen as redundant.
Decisions and policies by the parent Department of Homeland Security doomed FEMA to "a path to failure" that led to the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, former disaster chief Michael Brown told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee today. The Associated Press reports that Brown, who quit under fire as chief of FEMA just days after the Aug. 29 storm devastated much of the Gulf Coast area, said that the agency’s mission was marginalized when it was swallowed by the newly created Homeland Security agency. The department had terrorism prevention, not disaster response, as its top priority, Brown noted.
A group of Lower 9th Ward leaders and the community group ACORN have filed a federal lawsuit seeking major changes in Louisiana's plans to hold elections this spring for New Orleans mayor, City Council and other offices. The Times-Picayune reports that the suit says the state's election plans would violate the voting rights of thousands of primarily African-American voters displaced from the city since Hurricane Katrina.
February 9, 2006
In the air around New Orleans there is a scent of temporariness. Gone is the putrid aroma of post-Katrina mud and sludge, yet the sour stench of stale French Quarter libations has not fully returned, The Washington Post reports. On the calendar, the city sits at a midway point between hurricane seasons. New Orleanians are angry that President Bush did not devote more of his State of the Union speech to the city and are concerned that Washington's attention is no longer trained on them. They feel as though they are living in the mean in-between.
A state housing trust would be in charge of doling out money for buyouts or reconstruction of flood-damaged homes under a plan by Gov. Kathleen Blanco, setting up a possible conflict with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's recovery commission. The Times-Picayune reports that while state officials say local planning processes will determine where people can rebuild, the governor's legislation makes it clear that she wants the state to retain the authority to dispense whatever grants or loans will be available to homeowners.
February 8, 2006
Levee board consolidation doesn't sound like political dynamite. But as residents of post-Katrina New Orleans wrestle with whether it is worth rebuilding shattered homes and lives, it has become a potent symbol of efforts to tackle a long-standing culture of cronyism that may have worsened the disaster, Reuters reports. Critics say the local bodies in charge of the barriers that failed to stop Hurricane Katrina's devastating floods were rife with patronage, with officials handing out contracts to friends and neglecting their main duty of ensuring the levees were in good condition. Boards even branched into real estate and gambling.
Seeking more money from Washington for hurricane relief, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco entered uncharted legal territory with a threat to block oil and gas leases worth hundreds of millions to the federal treasury unless the state received its "fair share" of the revenues. The New York Times reports that oil and gas companies pay for the right to extract natural resources from the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana collects royalties, as well as severance taxes on resources extracted within three miles of its border. Those programs add hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the state treasury.
February 7, 2006
Standing inside New Orleans’ convention center, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco opened Louisiana's second special legislative session with pleas for solidarity and promises to curb corruption as the state pushed forward with its recovery from last year's storms. But the Los Angeles Times reports that a significant chunk of the Legislature wasn't there to listen. Almost a quarter of the state's 144 lawmakers didn't show up at the convention center, where thousands of storm victims had spent days waiting for help after Hurricane Katrina.
February 6, 2006
Like myriad other local institutions in New Orleans, Louisiana’s levee boards have existed for years in relative obscurity, all the while amassing wealth and property, and even maintaining their own police forces. But following the disastrous flooding after Hurricane Katrina, the operations of the levee boards have come under intense questioning, The New York Times reports. And today, the State Legislature convenes a special session that will consider whether to consolidate the local boards in Orleans and seven neighboring parishes into one regional board that would be professionally run and managed.
February 3, 2006
In great confusion and peculiar circumstances, New Orleans has suddenly found itself in the midst of an unexpected mayoral election campaign. The result may once again upend this city's old order: a white man might be elected mayor in a city that was, until a few months ago, mostly black, The New York Times reports. That outcome would have been undreamed of before the hurricane, but the high probability of one of Louisiana's most potent political families entering a race that almost didn't happen could further transform a political calculus that has prevailed here for nearly three decades.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco told a Senate committee Thursday that Louisiana officials "did the best we could" in coping with the horrible circumstances of Hurricane Katrina, a comment that drew a scolding response from the panel chairwoman. The Times-Picayune reports that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, called it completely unacceptable that the state denied the Louisiana Nursing Home Association direct access to the state's rescue system and that the state's transportation secretary responsible for developing plans to evacuate poor and elderly people from New Orleans hadn't done any work on the project.
The Bush administration announced Thursday that it would ask Congress to provide $18 billion more for Gulf Coast reconstruction this year, on top of $67 billion appropriated last year. But it provided no details about how the money would be spent, and made clear that it did not plan to request additional aid for the region in its 2007 federal budget, according to The New York Times.
February 2, 2006
Responsibility for the government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina extends widely but begins at the top of the Bush administration, which failed before the storm to name a White House, homeland security or other senior aide to take command of disaster relief, congressional investigators reported yesterday. The Washington Post reports that the blistering report by the Government Accountability Office contains the first assessments of the government's performance after Katrina. Bush aides, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and designees such as Michael D. Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency at that time, did not fill a leadership role during the hurricane, said GAO’s chief, underscoring "the immaturity of and weaknesses" of national preparations for terrorism and disaster. A spokesman for Chertoff, who has largely escaped criticism after the storm, called the GAO report "premature and unprofessional."
The racial divide exposed by Hurricane Katrina has united minority lawmakers in Congress who hope to leverage their numbers to aid overlooked communities. The Associated Press reports that members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus are creating a new group that will include all of their members. The Tri-Caucus will not replace the existing caucuses.
January 30, 2006
Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, President Bush's lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review of events since the hurricane shows. The Washington Post reports that while the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush's ringing call from New Orleans's Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to "do what it takes" to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action, critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that is largely incomplete as Bush heads into tomorrow’s State of the Union address.
A congressional investigation of the American Red Cross is set to escalate this week: The charity is due to respond to questions from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. And USA TODAY reports that two House members, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. and Jim McCrery, R-La., have called for reconsidering the Red Cross' official designation as the charity the government relies on first after national disasters. The two say that after Hurricane Katrina, the Red Cross did not respond quickly enough in low-income areas, did not reach remote Gulf Coast communities, could not manage its overwhelmed phone lines for storm victims, failed to cooperate with local organizations and was unclear in telling donors how their gifts would be spent.
January 26, 2006
The White House decision to withhold support from a major Congressional reconstruction plan left Louisiana officials expressing bewilderment on Wednesday over what they characterized as the lack of a workable alternative from the Bush administration. The New York Times reports that Congress has appropriated $6.2 billion in reconstruction aid, but officials say that is not enough to meet housing needs.
January 25, 2006
The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response. The New York Times reports that The White House this week also formally notified Rep. Richard H. Baker, R-La., that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.
January 24, 2006
In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show. The Washington Post reports that a 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room," the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.
A panel of Louisiana lawmakers has approved a plan to hold city elections in the spring by distributing absentee ballots to displaced residents and establishing new polling places to replace those devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that the joint House-Senate committee that backed the plan Monday was under pressure from a federal judge who has threatened to take over the planning process if the state does not set dates for April elections by Tuesday.
January 19, 2006
Former FEMA Director Michael Brown has placed blame on everyone from New Orleans' mayor to Louisiana's governor for the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. Now, he's including himself, according to the Associated Press. Brown said Wednesday he fell short of conveying the magnitude of the disaster wrought by the nation's deadliest hurricane, and calling for help
January 18, 2006
Progress rebuilding the Gulf Coast is still overshadowed by the devastation brought by Hurricane Katrina, senators said Tuesday, promising more federal help as they viewed broken levees and the shattered homes of victims trying to restart their lives. The Associated Press reports that four months after the Aug. 29 storm, lawmakers said they were surprised to see how little progress has been made in places like Gulfport, Miss., where churches were gutted and trees uprooted, and in New Orleans, where piles of boards and rubble sit where homes used to stand.
The debate about levee board consolidation is building steam heading into a Feb. 6-17 special session of the Legislature that will include proposals for overhauling the levee governing systems in the New Orleans area and southeast Louisiana. The Times-Picayune reports that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has charged the newly created Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority with the task of bringing legislation into focus for levee board consolidation, in addition to the authority's initial mission to combine coastal restoration and flood protection into a single strategy that would also set the state's financial priorities on the issue.
January 17, 2006
In the months since hurricanes smashed into the Gulf Coast, the federal government has set aside nearly $70 billion for emergency relief and long-term recovery programs. That's not enough, says U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. The Associated Press reports that Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said hard-hit areas–including Gulfport, Miss., and St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana–need more federal resources and attention.
January 13, 2006
President Bush made his ninth visit to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina on Thursday and said he is encouraged by signs of the city's recovery, but Mayor Ray Nagin said he did not get the commitment he wanted on U.S. Rep. Richard Baker's proposal to form a federal corporation that would buy flood-ravaged properties in the city. The Times-Picayune reports that the president's trip appeared designed to reaffirm his commitment to rebuilding the flooded city, expressed most memorably during a nationally televised speech from Jackson Square several weeks after the hurricane. Aside from a few comments before a closed-door meeting with business leaders and elected officials, Bush did not speak publicly or take questions, and he did not, as he had on previous trips, tour any of the worst-hit areas of New Orleans.
January 12, 2006
Angry homeowners screamed and City Council members seethed Wednesday as this city's recovery commission recommended imposing a four-month building moratorium on most of New Orleans and creating a powerful new authority that could use eminent domain to seize homes in neighborhoods that will not be rebuilt. The Washington Post reports that hundreds of residents packed into a hotel ballroom interrupted the presentation of the long-awaited proposal with shouts and taunts, booed its main architect and unrolled a litany of complaints.
January 11, 2006
U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., has joined the thousands of Mississippians suing State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., challenging the insurance company's refusal to cover property losses resulting from Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that Taylor's lawsuit comes less than a month after U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., filed a suit against State Farm. Both Taylor and Lott are represented by Lott's brother-in-law, attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs.
January 6, 2006
A group called the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, which is representing homeowners in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, will ask a federal judge today to stop up to 2,500 demolitions of homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. The Times-Picayune reports that more than four months after the levees collapsed, New Orleans has yet to develop clear rules of engagement for what housing advocates call "bulldozing"—the city's removal of badly damaged homes in hard-hit neighborhoods including the Lower 9th Ward.
When she calls the Legislature into an upcoming special session, Gov. Kathleen Blanco wants lawmakers to tackle two politically thorny issues: consolidating levee boards in south Louisiana and shrinking the New Orleans government, the Associated Press reports. Blanco told the New Orleans City Council on Thursday that those two items were planned for the special legislative session agenda that she will devise for a second hurricane recovery session.
January 3, 2006
It was Aug. 30 and the winds from Hurricane Katrina had barely died down, but Orleans Levee Board legal consultant George Carmouche already was cashing in on the storm by greatly expanding his previously limited role at the flood protection agency. The Times-Picayune reports that during the next two months, Carmouche, his family and his law firm associates collected fees for everything from office space to boat salvage work to media consulting—a myriad of nonlegal services that currently total about $90,000 and counting, according to Levee Board records.
See The Times-Picayune article
December 23, 2005
A massive package of federal aid for Hurricane Katrina victims would come mostly from a dwindling Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster fund, leaving agency officials wondering Thursday whether they will need more money to help storm evacuees beyond next spring, the Associated Press reports. A massive defense spending measure that includes $29 billion in reconstruction assistance awaited a final congressional vote Thursday. All but $5 billion of that would come from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, leaving the agency with about $11 billion to help move thousands of evacuated families from hotels into homes.
Efforts to locate 500 children still classified as missing after Hurricane Katrina are stalled because FEMA, citing privacy laws, has refused to share its evacuee database with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to investigators tracking the cases. The Washington Post reports that not until the White House and Justice Department intervened earlier this month did Department of Homeland Security officials agree to a compromise that grants FBI agents limited access to information that may provide clues to many of the unresolved cases.
A New Orleans citizens' group has gathered more than 47,000 signatures in the latest attempt to unite the region's six levee boards and stamp out any political patronage within them, USA TODAY reports. The Citizens for One Greater New Orleans is pushing Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to call a special legislative session in January to pass a law creating a single levee board made up of hurricane experts. Currently, the members are political appointees.
A Navy plan to pay Gulf Coast shipbuilders about $1.7 billion for losses related to damages and construction delays from Katrina may overstate the actual costs and could dampen efforts to collect insurance payments, a government report warns. According to an Associated Press report, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says that Northrop Grumman may be able to collect insurance claims for future increased costs related to labor and overhead. If the government pays now, the CRS report says, the company will have little incentive to negotiate with insurers for those payments. But Navy and Northrop Grumman officials contended Wednesday that there is no overlap between the company's insurance claims and the Navy's funding.
Katrina exposed FEMA as a dysfunctional organization, paralyzed in a crisis four years after the supposedly galvanizing attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, The Washington Post reports. And it turned then-FEMA director Michael Brown — a former executive of the International Arabian Horse Association who had no emergency management experience before joining the Bush administration — into a symbol of government ineptitude. But Brown's well-chronicled gaffes in Louisiana had less impact on FEMA than his little-known power struggles in Washington. Brown lost almost all of them — partly because he was widely despised at DHS for his relentless infighting — and FEMA paid a price in money, manpower, missions and prestige.
December 22, 2005
For some African-American residents who were driven from their homes, the evidence suggests unseen powers ordered the sabotage of New Orleans' protective levees to cause low-lying black neighborhoods to flood. The plot, according to those who believe it, was to use the deadly hurricane to transform this majority-black city into a whiter, richer place, reports the Chicago Tribune. And everything that has happened since — the delays in reopening the poorest districts, the shuttering of the city's public housing projects, the sluggish delivery of federal storm aid, the mass layoff of the city's mostly black municipal workforce — has only reinforced the fear of many exiled black residents that New Orleans will be reconstructed without them.
A $29 billion hurricane recovery spending bill was approved 93-0 in Senate on Wednesday night after a Democratic-led filibuster forced GOP leaders to strip the measure of a controversial provision to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The Times-Picayune reports that the unanimous vote obscured the high drama during Wednesday's marathon session and the bill's torturous path to passage. The House, which approved a spending bill with the ANWR drilling permission included, must return to session today to approve one without that provision.
December 21, 2005
Last-minute opposition from the Bush administration stalled legislation to create a federal corporation that would buy homes damaged or destroyed by Katrina and Rita, according to the bill's sponsor. But Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, said the administration is willing to move the bill forward early next year if some changes are made, The Times-Picayune reports.
Internal meeting notes released by a union official say Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told employees that many changes planned for federal disaster response were a public relations ploy. The Associated Press reports that the purported statements were in typed notes issued Tuesday by a union representative for federal emergency workers. A Homeland Security Department spokesman said Chertoff considers the post-Hurricane Katrina changes one of his highest priorities and never would have made such comments.
Federal officials promised Tuesday to rush delivery of the temporary addresses of thousands of voters scattered by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. The promise appeased Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater, who earlier in the day asked the attorney general to sue the Federal Emergency Management Agency for supplying a list riddled with errors. FEMA explained at a meeting late Tuesday that a technical glitch led to the omission of addresses for evacuees living in other states, Ater said.
December 20, 2005
After securing $29 billion in aid for hurricane-ravaged states, Gulf Coast lawmakers held their breath Monday as the funds became entangled in a Senate debate over a controversial oil drilling measure. The Associated Press reports that the hurricane aid was part of a massive defense spending bill approved by the House early Monday but that was still awaiting Senate passage. The measure included money to repair levees, spur economic development and rebuild badly damaged roads in the region obliterated by Hurricane Katrina.
December 19, 2005
U.S. Sen. Trent Lott says personal losses he suffered because of Hurricane Katrina will weigh on his decision whether to run for re-election in 2006, the Associated Press reports. The Mississippi Republican lost his waterfront home in Pascagoula during the Aug. 29 storm, and he has sued his insurance company in what has become a wind-versus-water-damage fight between insurance companies and thousands of storm victims. Lott said in an interview with the The (Biloxi) Sun Herald newspaper that he will rebuild, but not immediately.
Since Hurricane Katrina hit, billions of dollars in federal aid has poured into the devastated areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, primarily for the most critical emergency needs: providing temporary housing, restarting governments and cleaning up the mountains of debris. The New York Times reports that on Sunday, leaders in the House and Senate moved to switch from a relief effort to recovery, agreeing to appropriate large chunks of money to rebuild the region and, at least in part, to bail out some of the tens of thousands of people who were financially devastated by the storm. The recovery package allocates $11.5 billion in new grant money, mostly for Mississippi and Louisiana.
The U.S. Senate passed nearly $8 billion in tax breaks for Gulf Coast businesses on Friday, but denied federal help for casinos, liquor stores and golf courses, the Associated Press reports. Almost four months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed many area businesses, the Senate responded to President Bush's appeal for revitalizing the region with a special enterprise zone. The tax breaks for business investment are aimed at luring companies into the region and keeping those that are already there.
December 16, 2005
From the moment New Orleans' filthy floodwaters were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, regulators said environmental rules had to be set aside to save the Gulf Coast from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that federal and state agencies waived environmental laws regulating open burning and asbestos removal and waived rules for landfills, gasoline and diesel fuel standards, and water and air pollution—all in the name of recovery and rebuilding. Some say the waivers went too far, padding the pockets of oil companies and creating long-term environmental hazards.
The Bush administration yesterday pledged an additional $1.5 billion in federal spending to strengthen New Orleans's storm-battered levees, vowing to give the city "better and safer" flood walls but stopping short of explicitly promising protection against catastrophic Category 5 hurricanes. The Washington Post reports that the proposed new spending would double the White House's previous $1.6 billion commitment for levee repairs and match the level sought by Louisiana's congressional delegation in budget negotiations in recent weeks.
In another indictment of local oversight of levees in the New Orleans area, a U.S. Senate committee heard wide-ranging testimony Thursday about lax maintenance, confusion over who was in charge of emergency repairs and even a report that the Army Corps of Engineers was blocked by a local levee official from trying to fill breaches in the London Avenue Canal. The Times-Picayune reports that a colonel who testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security said corps officials and contractors who responded to the breached levees after the hurricane found themselves locked in the middle of "turf wars" involving some of the levee districts with jurisdiction: Orleans, East Jefferson and West Jefferson.
See The Times-Picayune article
Despite opposition from some conservative Republicans, the House Financial Services Committee approved a bill Thursday that would establish a government-operated corporation to redevelop areas of Louisiana hit by Hurricane Katrina, CongressDaily reports. The measure also would direct the spending of $17 billion already appropriated for hurricane relief to rebuilding communities and providing temporary housing for evacuees.
December 15, 2005
The Republican chairman of a special House investigation panel has subpoenaed the Pentagon, and is considering sending another to the White House, to get documents detailing the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the Associated Press reports. The unusual legal action was the latest twist in the congressional inquiry of failures related to the Aug. 29 storm that killed more than 1,300 people in Gulf Coast states.
The drive to rebuild communities devastated by Katrina has slowed, hampered by congressional money worries, mixed signals from the White House and confusion about which of the region's problems to fix first. USA TODAY reports that President Bush's pledge to rebuild communities devastated by the hurricane is running into opposition in Congress over the cost.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco gave no ground to Capitol Hill critics Wednesday, saying she and other state officials did all they could to save lives following Hurricane Katrina and that she feared Congress' focus on missteps was an excuse to deny more money for reconstruction, the Chicago Tribune reports. Blanco offered her first public accounting to Congress on her handling of the crisis as House and Senate negotiators wrangled over a new aid package for the states hit by the storm.
Citing enormous backlogs and high rates of declined loans for hurricane victims, a House Democrat on Wednesday called on the head of the Small Business Administration to quit immediately. The Associated Press reports that Rep. Nydia Velazquez, the top Democrat on the House Small Business Committee, said that a flood of missteps by the SBA this year make it clear that Hector Barreto isn't capable of leading the agency. Velazquez said that since the hurricanes roared ashore in August and September, the agency has declined 80 percent of disaster loans related to Katrina and Rita and has a backlog of more than 200,000 requests for relief.
December 14, 2005
The issue of where to place trailer parks in New Orleans seems to have stirred tensions and rubbed people like little else, reports The New York Times. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to set up more than 22,000 trailers in the city in an effort to house returning residents while they rebuild their homes. Many will go in private yards, but plans also call for 22 trailer parks, said Rachel C. Rodi, a FEMA spokeswoman. The juxtaposition has raised simmering issues of class, race and neighborhood loyalty in a city whose residents were far more rooted than those in almost any other in the nation.
The White House has declined to bail out Entergy Corp., New Orleans' bankrupt utility company, prompting dismay among local officials who see the decision as an indication that the Bush administration is not committed to rebuilding the city after Hurricane Katrina. The Los Angeles Times reports that officials in New Orleans said there was still a chance that assistance could come through congressional action or federal grants. But because Entergy is a regulated monopoly, they said, the decision makes it likely that the utility will be forced to pass on to the public the $350 million bill for its recovery.
The Republican chairman of a special House panel investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina decided Wednesday to reject, at least for now, a proposal to subpoena the White House for documents detailing internal communications before and after the storm hit on Aug. 29. But lawmakers agreed to subpoena the Pentagon for similar Katrina-related documents if Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld refuses to immediately turn them over or explain why he cannot. The Associated Press reports that the panel's chairman, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., left open the possibility of subpoenaing the White House later. "We cannot do our job if we don't get these documents, and we won't get these documents if we don't subpoena them," said Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., who sought to get internal memos, e-mails, and other communications from the White House and the Pentagon.
December 13, 2005
An effort to create an agency to boost poor, predominantly black counties in the South is stuck in legislative limbo partly because of Hurricane Katrina, which further devastated many of those very areas, reports the Associated Press. Those pushing the legislation to aid the “Southern Black Belt” say the timing has never been more critical, yet they acknowledge its prospects of passage are dim in a financially strapped Congress — so much so that Alabama Democrat Rep. Artur Davis decided not to reintroduce his bill in the House this session. "I wish I could say I was optimistic about it," said former Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the original Senate sponsor. "It's going to have to have somebody with some real clout. Maybe one of those presidential candidates will see the wisdom of doing this — not only the political wisdom, but also the cultural wisdom."
Trying to avoid a public relations disaster, aides to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco fretted over her not appearing to be in charge after Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29, even worrying about her clothing, documents released Monday show. The Associated Press reports that 13 pages of e-mails sent in the first days after the storm also reflect the Blanco administration's concerns over race relations — specifically, the number of black victims leaving Louisiana to find shelter.
A Mississippi congressman says he is furious that several hundred defunct trailers are being scavenged for spare parts in a temporary-housing graveyard, just off Interstate 10 in Harrison County. "I have had it up to here with Bechtel," Rep. Gene Taylor, a Democrat from Bay St. Louis, said of the California firm contracted through FEMA to install travel trailers. The local Sun Herald reports that Taylor's office sent a letter to Sid Melton, head of FEMA's housing effort in Mississippi, wanting to know why "more than a million dollars worth of trailers are not being used," and whether they will be repaired and delivered to needy residents.
December 9, 2005
On Saturday, hundreds of displaced residents living in Houston will return to New Orleans to protest government policies they say make returning to their old homes difficult. The Houston Chronicle reports that more than 200 are expected to join a bus caravan organized by longtime New Orleans activist Malcolm Suber, who alleges that blacks have been excluded from planning their city's rebirth.
Military officials delayed an evacuation of Hurricane Katrina victims from the Superdome in New Orleans late last summer, prolonging their stay in squalid conditions for another 24 hours, a FEMA official told Congress on Thursday. CongressDaily reports that the FEMA official, Philip Parr, who was working out of the Superdome, said he had devised a plan to use helicopters to evacuate victims to dry land and later bus them to adequate shelters in less than 30 hours on Wednesday, Aug. 31 — two days after the storm hit the city and massive flooding ensued.
December 8, 2005
Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the unlikely duo that has proved to be a fund-raising colossus on behalf of disaster victims, announced yesterday they would give $90 million from their Hurricane Katrina relief fund to universities, faith-based groups and other rebuilding efforts along the devastated Gulf Coast, The Washington Post reports. Bush and Clinton, who were tapped in September by President George W. Bush to lead a fund-raising effort for hurricane victims, have raised $100 million in their Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.
Mississippi’s Gov. Haley Barbour delivered an impassioned plea to a House select committee Wednesday, urging Congress to quickly pass Hurricane Katrina relief legislation, which has been stalled for months. The Republican says that delayed federal assistance is causing businesses to reconsider relocating away from Mississippi, which would hurt state employment, consumer spending and tax revenues, according to a Knight Ridder Newspapers report. Barbour told lawmakers that federal aid is urgently needed for 10,000 temporary housing units, to rebuild demolished roads and bridges, and to fund school districts overwhelmed by reconstruction costs.
See Knight Ridder Newspapers article
A new battle over congressional access to White House files broke out Wednesday over the response to Hurricane Katrina, according to The New York Times. Mainly at issue is how President Bush and his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., responded when they received the first news from Louisiana and Mississippi of dire conditions.
Before Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf Coast was well on its way to becoming a popular gambling destination. Now, for the gaming industry, a second storm — this one political — is brewing, reports the Los Angeles Times. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are split over whether taxpayers should help rebuild gambling establishments and other businesses objectionable to social conservatives.
Federal emergency response managers feared they were unprepared for catastrophic disasters a year before Hurricane Katrina hit — yet their requests for training, equipment and an updated operations plan were ignored, officials say. The Associated Press reports that in a June 2004 memo to Michael Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, leaders of national response teams said they were getting "zero funding for training, exercise or team equipment."
December 6, 2005
Two days after Katrina hit New Orleans, thousands were trapped in the city without food, water and medical care. But The Times-Picayune reports that a top aide to Gov. Kathleen Blanco sent out an e-mail informing his colleagues that his staff had stopped calling for the buses needed to evacuate people. The aide said he had gotten word from another of Blanco’s staff that the vehicles were no longer needed because FEMA had enough buses on the way and that the military would airlift people from the Superdome.
December 5, 2005
Thousands of documents released by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco on Friday night shed new light on clashes between state officials, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and the Bush administration as they struggled to respond to Hurricane Katrina. According to The Washington Post, among the more than 100,000 pages of newly released records are memos showing Blanco frustrated and angered over delays in evacuations and the slow delivery of promised federal aid.
Three months after Hurricane Katrina, political figures in New Orleans talk often of the progress that has been made — trash cleared, homes lighted, money spent. Louisiana, they say, is proving its self-reliance. But hidden behind these sometimes rosy declarations are tens of thousands of their constituents, living at the edge of their dwindling resources, The New York Times reports. Adding to their anxiety is what these citizens describe as a frustrating paper chase through the bureaucracy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Hours after New Orleans officials announced last week that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said. The Washington Post reports that city officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring free high-speed Internet access to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition.
See the Center’s “Well Connected” report on the municipal wireless debate
November 28, 2005
Ousted FEMA director Michael Brown plans to make a fresh start in Colorado, selling his expertise on how emergency planning can go very right or very wrong, the Rocky Mountain News reports. Brown, who was vilified over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, has formed a consulting firm to help clients avoid the kind of mistakes that sunk his career at FEMA.
See Rocky Mountain News article
November 23, 2005
Government at every level — local, state and federal — was unprepared, uncoordinated and overwhelmed in dealing with the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which devastated the Gulf Coast in and killed more than 900 people in New Orleans, Frontline reports. The PBS report examines the chain of decisions that slowed federal response to the calamity in New Orleans, government's failure to protect thousands from a natural disaster that long had been predicted, and the state of America's disaster-response system four years after 9/11.
After making last-minute tweaks, Louisiana lawmakers have sent legislation with more than $600 million in state spending cuts to Gov. Kathleen Blanco for her signature, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. The House bill is the state's solution for the nearly $1 billion hurricane-related shortfall in tax collections caused by Katrina and Rita. The biggest cuts, in health care and education, will likely cause thousands of state workers to be laid off and a reduction in the free prescription medication that the poor can receive.
$600 million cut from state budget
A bill establishing a statewide building code for homes and businesses that must be rebuilt in southern Louisiana has been sent to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, according to a report in The Times-Picayune. The bill would apply for structures rebuilt in the wake of Katrina and Rita and all buildings built or rebuilt statewide starting in 2007. Backers said its passage will help spur redevelopment, limit future hurricane destruction and hold down insurance costs. Opponents said the code will increase the cost of building homes.
Beefed-up La. building code passes
Louisiana lawmakers have voted down an effort to reshape the state's fragmented levee protection system, long criticized as a bastion of patronage, according to a report in The New York Times. The proposal, strongly backed by business interests in New Orleans who hoped to demonstrate the state's seriousness in rebuilding, would have consolidated a host of local boards in charge of maintaining levees. But the consolidation effort was not backed by the governor, who pushed a measure that some regard as weaker.
Criticized Levee Boards Survive in Louisiana
November 22, 2005
Louisiana officials worry that Congress and the Bush administration are losing interest in their plight less than three months after Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast, according to a report in The New York Times. They cite an array of stalled bills and policy changes — including measures to finance long-term hurricane protection, revive small businesses and compensate the uninsured — that they say are crucial to rebuilding New Orleans and persuading some of its hundreds of thousands of evacuated residents to return.
Louisiana Sees Faded Urgency in Relief Effort
Louisiana officials are concerned that the nationally televised comments of an Louisiana Recovery Authority official could help kill what they say is a comprehensive plan for protecting New Orleans from major hurricanes and restoring the state's fractured coastline, reports The Times-Picayune. Congress already is considering levee-raising and wetlands restoration, two critical steps to better protect southern Louisiana. The authority's executive director said on 60 Minutes that within 90 years the city would be an island surrounded by water and that people and businesses should move away.
November 21, 2005
The Texas congressional delegation and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have turned up the heat on FEMA to extend the deadline the agency has set for ending its housing payments to thousands of hurricane evacuees staying in hotels past Dec. 1, according to a report by the Associated Press. At the same time, the Texas Apartment Association cited "broken promises, unreasonable deadlines and a mind-numbing bureaucracy" as reasons why many of its members likely would refuse to make apartments available to storm victims. More than 50,000 victims of Katrina and Rita are staying in hotels in Texas. Almost 20,000 of them are in Houston.
State Officials Pressure FEMA To Extend Katrina Victims Deadline
When Hurricane Katrina washed away the Orleans Levee District's lakefront headquarters, the agency's Baton Rouge lawyer quickly found it a new home — his office, at a cost of $5,000 a month. Before he even owned the property, George L. Carmouche hammered out a lease with his wife's cousin, Levee Board President James Huey, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. Then district employees stocked the place with furniture, telephones and computers. Now he and Huey have resigned, and the Levee District — which didn't approve the lease until two months after it took effect — wants FEMA to foot the bill for everything.
N.O. levee district BR office raises questions
November 15, 2005
Both houses of the Louisiana Legislature have voted to approve the governor's proposal that would shift responsibility for running most of New Orleans' schools to the state Department of Education, The Times-Picayune reports. Legislators have been increasingly unhappy in recent years with the city school system's poor academic performance and financial mismanagement. Some state officials say the closure of the city's public schools since Hurricane Katrina has given them an opportunity to make major changes.
Legislature OKs school takeover
November 14, 2005
Two bills that would require officials to report any business gained from Katrina related contracts have been approved by a committee of the Louisiana statehouse, the Times-Picayune reports.
Bills regulate officials' cleanup work
November 10, 2005
Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, chairman of the House select panel investigating the response to Hurricane Katrina, threatened Wednesday to issue subpoenas for documents if the White House and other agencies don't provide them by Nov. 18. The committee made its initial request in late September and set an original due date of Oct. 4. According to a Louisiana congressman, key documents are missing — including anything involving Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and correspondence between federal agencies
House Chairman May Subpoena Katrina Papers
As the memory of Katrina fades with time, Louisiana officials are finding support fading for funding to rebuild New Orleans with protection to withstand Category 5 hurricanes, the Times-Picayune reports.
Category 5 protection support dries up
November 9, 2005
Louisiana's House Committee on Transportation, Highways and Public Works has passed a bill aimed at speeding reconstruction work that would allow the state highway department to use "design-build" contracting, the Associated Press reports in its state legislative roundup. House Bill 12, sent to the full House after Tuesday's vote, would let one firm both design and build a project rather than the usual hiring of separate firms through separate contract bidding processes. Some fear the move could backfire and inflate costs. Meanwhile, the House Commerce Committee is considering a building code bill that would require use of more expensive materials and more elaborate building techniques to enable homes to withstand hurricane-force winds, the Advocate reports. Critics of House Bill 76 say imposing new building codes in just a few weeks will halt construction when some 200,000 homes need rebuilding.
Notes from the Louisiana Legislature
Building code changes advancing
November 7, 2005
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has opened a 17-day legislative special session that will focus on post-Katrina rebuilding, but with a budget deficit expected to exceed $1 billion, state lawmakers will be limited in what they can do with the 77 hurricane-related items on the agenda, the New York Times reports. The governor's proposed legislation requiring that state officials disclose their business dealings with regard to recovery efforts is being criticized, reports New Orleans' Times-Picayune. Some argue that officials and their immediate family members should be barred from contention for federal government rebuilding and cleanup contracts.
Louisiana Lawmakers Begin Special Session on Rebuilding
Blanco plan on disclosing contracts takes heat
The House committee investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina is dealing with delays in having its information requests filled, the Mobile Register reports. While long-sought Alabama state records finally have arrived, the committee continues to have trouble with the Bush administration. Members of the Republican panel have accused administration officials of stonewalling, singling out the Defense Department as particularly difficult.
Congress finally gets state records on storm efforts
The U.S. Government Accountability Office released its report to the House Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina.
GAO: Contracting for Response and Recovery Efforts
November 4, 2005
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of hurricane recovery expenditures told a House committee investigating the government's slow response after Katrina that they are still not sure why some efforts have stalled and local firms are not getting a larger share of the work, and that they must do more research to learn how reconstruction and relief money is being spent, the Washington Post reports.
Katrina Recovery Officials Unsure What's Been Spent
A spokeswoman for Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that Louisiana is not in the financial position to pay the $3.7 billion that federal law says is the state's portion of the hurricane relief effort, USA Today reports. Staffers for the governor "about fell over" Wednesday night when they received the Federal Emergency Management Agency's estimate of the state's costs for hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said a consultant working for Blanco.
Louisiana can't pay Katrina, Rita bills
FEMA's latest report to Congress has been posted online.
Letter to Committee on Appropriations
Disaster Relief Fund Statistics
November 3, 2005
During hearings Wednesday before the House panel investigating the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina, officials from companies such as Carnival Cruise Lines defended their much-assailed government contracts, the Associated Press and Reuters report. Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that some lawmakers are sharply criticizing the Bush administration for failing to submit related documents that include e-mails and other correspondence between various agencies and the White House. Also, former Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown drew fire over now-released agency internal e-mail messages that some on the committee said showed him to have appeared overwhelmed in his leadership position and overly preoccupied with his image on television when the storm struck.
Winners of Katrina contracts defend deals
Carnival defends $236 million Katrina contract
Panel Still Waiting for Hurricane Katrina Papers
Gov. Kathleen Blanco plans to push for a new law to require officials to report any business profits they gain from the Katrina recovery effort in the Louisiana legislature's special session, Baton Rouge's Advocate reports.
Blanco wants officials to report recovery contracts
The Advocate also reports that Louisiana legislators studying possible changes to state law were critical of the response times of the Louisiana National Guard and other state entities in wake of Katrina and sought answers while questioning Adjutant General Bennett C. Landreneau, who is also director of the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
Guards' Katrina response questioned
November 2, 2005
Reps. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., and Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., called on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspector general to investigate several Operation Blue Roof contracts awarded to provide temporary roofs for homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, BizNewOrleans.com reports. News reports have suggested the government is paying $2,980 to $3,500 for plastic tarps that should cost about $300; as many as 300,000 homes in Louisiana may need roof repairs. "If contractors are excessively overpaid for the standard commercial value of their work, we've got a problem," said Thompson. "The federal government is wasting taxpayer dollars and it needs to start doing a better job of managing federal contracts."
Congressmen want investigation of 'Operation Blue Roof'
President Bush chose Donald Powell as the administration's point man to deal with Congress, state and local governments, and businesses on hurricane relief matters, the Associated Press reports. He also eventually will take over as coordinator of Gulf Coast recovery efforts. Powell, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., was a large contributor to Bush's presidential campaign and was once appointed chairman of the Texas A&M University System board by Bush.
Bush picks FDIC chair to run Gulf Coast recovery
November 1, 2005
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco issued wide-ranging 77-item call for a special legislative session in Baton Rouge to be held Nov. 6-22 to deal with hurricane-related problems, The Shreveport Times reports. "This is a substantial package of initiatives that will help our families, our businesses and our state recover from Katrina and Rita," Blanco said. "We will cut spending and restructure government to address a $1 billion drop in state revenues." The package includes legislation to rebuild the New Orleans school system, give tax breaks to citizens and businesses affected by the storms, create a new building code, build stronger levees, improve coastal protection and strengthen ethics laws so that elected officials and their families can't profit from recovery efforts.
Gov. issues broad call for session
Governor's Proclamation No. 62 KBB 2005
Baton Rouge's Advocate reports that Louisiana state Reps. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, and Don Cazayoux, D-New Roads, have urged the governor to present a proposal in the special session that would require all public officials to report any federal money they receive personally from hurricane relief and recovery efforts.
Two legislators want relief funds disclosed
Concerned about Katrina's effect on the electoral process as the Feb. 4 date for municipal elections for 20 public offices in New Orleans approaches, Sen. Russell Feingold has introduced the Displaced Citizens Voter Protection Act of 2005. NationalJournal.com reports that the Wisconsin Democrat's bill would give the hurricane victims the same absentee voting rights as members of the military and voters living overseas, such as allowing them to request ballots online. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., has introduced a companion bill in the House.
October 31, 2005
The Senate unanimously passed a measure Friday that calls on the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general to investigate the much-criticized $236 million FEMA contract with Carnival Cruise Lines to provide ships for emergency evacuee housing, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Carnival Ship Deal Faces Probe
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has posted its seventh weekly Hurricane Katrina spending report to the House Appropriations Committee.
Weekly Report on Hurricane Katrina Emergency Supplemental Appropriations
October 27, 2005
The Christian Science Monitor looks at the role politics plays in influencing the federal government's response to natural disasters. Researchers who studied federal disaster spending patterns from 1960 to 2003 found, for example, that presidents are more likely to declare disasters in key states during election years and that more money tends to go to states represented by lawmakers serving on committees overseeing the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The ties between disaster aid and politics
The White House has reinstated a law that guarantees the prevailing local wage to Hurricane Katrina recovery workers paid with federal money, reports the Washington Post. It had been waived to save the government money and hasten the rebuilding process, but bipartisan opposition to the move grew in Congress. The wage guarantee rule will go back into effect on Nov. 8 and will not apply retroactively.
Prevailing Wages to Be Paid Again On Gulf Coast
October 26, 2005
John Breaux, Louisiana's former U.S. senator, will lead the state's effort to lobby Congress and the White House on reconstruction issues, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. Breaux spent more than 30 years in Congress and now works for Patton Boggs, one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington, D.C. He is donating his services free of charge.
Breaux to lead the charge for La.
October 25, 2005
Florida-based debris-removal company AshBritt Inc. hired Mike Parker, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as its lobbyist shortly before winning a $500 million Katrina cleanup contract from the Corps, reports The Hill. Corps officials deny a link between the hiring of Parker and the awarding of the contract.
Firm hired ex-Corps head before winning deal
A report by Democrats on the House Small Business Committee found that the federal government failed last year to meet congressional contracting targets for small and minority-owned business and raised concerns that they will be shut out of Gulf Coast recovery work, according to Inc. Magazine. The Small Business Administration, which oversees the contracts, has since sought public input on how to improve contracting procedures, including how to better monitor companies' small business status.
Fed Contracts Short of Small Business Targets
Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked the Department of Homeland Security inspector general to investigate whether an international office-supply company is illegally presenting itself as a small business in order to win federal contracts, according to an online news release posted on Yahoo! Finance. The company, Corporate Express, received a Katrina-related printing services contract worth roughly $800,000 from FEMA.
October 21, 2005
Rep. Henry Waxman has called on federal officials to explain their $236 million deal with Carnival Cruise Lines to provide three cruise ships for post-Hurricane Katrina housing, newspapers report. Waxman on Thursday asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to provide documents showing how the contract cost was calculated. Lawmakers from both parties criticized the deal as wasteful, but Waxman's critique is the first to offer specific data about the finances underlying the deal.
Lawmaker makes waves over cruise-ship housing
Congressman faults Carnival's lucrative contract for hurricane housing
The New York Times reports that Louisiana officials are engaging in a concerted effort to account for every penny of the federal Hurricane Katrina aid the state receives and spends. Gov. Kathleen Blanco promised a skeptical Congress on Tuesday that steps would be taken to make the state's financial affairs as honest and open as possible. The state is hiring layers of accountants and consultants and will submit all money requests to the state auditor or inspector general.
Louisiana Tries to Show It Is Handling Its Relief Money Honestly
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers submitted to Congress its sixth weekly report on Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction expenditures.
Army Corps of Engineers report to the House Appropriations Committee
October 19, 2005
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Tuesday told congressional subcommittees looking at rebuilding strategies that federal Hurricane Katrina recovery aid will not be wasted or mismanaged by the city and state, reports the Times-Picayune. Blanco said that in addition to a team of its own auditors, the state will hire a "Big Four" accounting firm to review all Katrina-related expenditures and will retain a second Big Four firm to evaluate those findings.
La. will be honest, panel is told
The mob of private companies converging on Congress as it deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been a boon for Washington-area lobbyists, reports the Newhouse News Service. Capital One Corp., part of a coalition of banks and investment firms pushing for tax credits to spur construction projects, hired the Cypress Group. The firm employs Patrick Cave, former aide to House Committee on Financial Services member Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana. To get a piece of the debris removal work being managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Southern Recycling has hired former Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, who oversaw the corps while he was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Lobbyists Jockey to Win Post-Katrina Money
October 18, 2005
The Times-Picayune reports that U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., struck a deal with the White House that overrules a federal directive requiring state and local governments to pay a share of the cost of rebuilding New Orleans-area levees to pre-Katrina levels. The agreement breaks a logjam that dealyed construction work and put about 15 design and construction contracts on hold. An estimated $400 million to $1.6 billion worth of work will be required to restore the area's levee system to pre-Katrina protection levels.
Deal ends levee contract logjam
October 17, 2005
The Shaw Group has been contracted by FEMA to run shelters in San Antonio, according to the local Express-News. The newspaper takes a look at the company's hurricane relief awards.
No-bid shelter contracts to be reopened
The Miami Herald reports that $7,500 or more in daily fees are helping to keep the Alabama Cruise Terminal in Mobile afloat. It is the home port and current location for Carnival Cruise Lines' the one of three Carnival ships housing evacuees under a $236 million contract with FEMA. The Holiday is slated to move to Mississippi, the home state for most of its estimated 1,400 passengers.
Mobile to bill FEMA for lost revenue on evacuee ship
McGraw-Hill Construction takes a look at four $100 million FEMA contracts for evacuee housing awarded to Fluor, Bechtel, Shaw Group and CH2M Hill, and reports that agency officials say FEMA "always intended to renegotiate."
FEMA Explains Early Contracts After Director's Senate Grilling
October 14, 2005
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Web site has been updated with additional data on Katrina contracts and the corps’ weekly report to Congress on Katrina expenditures.
Army Corps of Engineers Katrina contracts
Army Corps of Engineers report to the House Appropriations Committee
October 12, 2005
Inspectors general from several agencies and officials from the Government Accountability Office told a House subcommittee that they will conduct several audits to prevent fraud and waste in spending on Katrina-related contracts, the Associated Press reports. The announcements came as a number of bills aimed at assuring accountability in the Gulf Coast reconstruction process also are pending in Congress.
Government auditors pledge to investigate Katrina contracts
As President Bush toured the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast again yesterday, Rep. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana told CNN that he planned to meet with Bush to discuss cutting through FEMA red tape. The Republican said that local businesses do not expect favoritism in the contracting process, just a fair chance to compete and to show that they can be cost-effective.
Lawmaker to Bush: Help cut Katrina red tape
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg and Sen. Edward Kennedy introduced a bill calling for the creation of a new agency that would lead in the estimated $200 billion Gulf Coast reconstruction effort, The Wall Street Journal reports. The idea of having centralized oversight of expenditures is popular among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, but the White House has not backed the initiative yet.
Bill Would Create 'Czar' For Katrina Reconstruction (subscription)
October 11, 2005
Having shouldered strong criticism for awarding no-bid contracts to large, well-connected companies, FEMA officials guaranteed yesterday that firms run by women, minorities and the disabled will be given part of the Katrina reconstruction work, The Washington Post reports. FEMA also said that local companies will be given preference in the new competitive contracting process.
FEMA to reserve contracts for disadvantaged companies
Key advisors to Louisiana's senators, who drafted federal legislation to fund rebuilding the Gulf Coast, were lobbyists representing energy, transportation and other special interests, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times shows. The Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act, introduced last month by Democrat Mary L. Landrieu and Republican David Vitter has a price tag of about $250 billion.
Lobbyists Advise Katrina Relief
FEMA's latest report (Oct. 6) to Congress on Katrina-related expenditures has been posted online.
FEMA report to the House Appropriations Committee
October 7, 2005
In today's editions, newspapers analyze the implications of the announcement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's director that the agency will rebid Katrina-related contracts with a combined worth of $400 million that had been awarded with limited or no competition. Highlights include:
- The contracts up for rebids were awarded to four companies specializing in construction, consulting and engineering: the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La., Fluor Corporation of Aliso Viejo, Calif., Bechtel National of San Francisco and CH2M Hill of Denver. They have long-benefited from government contracts, and some employ lobbyists or executives with close ties to the White House and the Republican Party. The New York Times reports that the Shaw Group's lobbyist, Joe M. Allbaugh, is a former FEMA director and a friend of President Bush.
- The actual impact of the decision to rebid contracts could prove limited. FEMA doesn't plan to have competition for other Katrina deals, and the Army Corps of Engineers has not expressed intention to revise its own no-bid contracts.
- The Los Angeles Times says that FEMA Acting Director David Paulison could not answer how many contracts have been awarded with limited or no competition.
Katrina Contracts Will Be Reopened
In Shift, FEMA Will Seek Bids for Gulf Work
FEMA Reopening Its No-Bid Contracts
At a Senate committee hearing Thursday, FEMA's acting director testified on the agency's housing assistance efforts and long-term rebuilding. Acknowledging that many "are rightfully concerned about the costs," David Paulison sought to clarify the agency's contracting procedures.
David Paulison's testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee
In remarks offered before the FEMA chief's testimony, Sen. Joseph Lieberman said that the agency's no-bid contracts have "created opportunities for fraud, waste and abuse."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman's statement
Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard L. Skinner appeared Thursday before two House committees to explain the oversight plan for Katrina expenditures.
Testimony of DHS Inspector General
While Republican legislators are pushing for an across-the-board spending cut in Gulf Coast recovery efforts, Louisiana state officials are requesting $1 billion in federal funds to repair roads in the Baton Rouge area. The proposal is aimed at easing traffic problems caused by Hurricane Katrina damage.
Republicans in Congress Seek Budget Cuts for Storm Relief
Congress' top budget analyst said Thursday that the total cost for rebuilding the Katrina-hit areas could be close $150 billion instead of the estimated $200 billion or more that was pitched originally, the Associated Press reports.
October 5, 2005
The Los Angeles Times reports that a controversial six-month, $192 million government contract with Carnival Cruise Lines for post-Katrina emergency housing includes more company-friendly benefits than originally disclosed. Lawmakers from both parties have called for an investigation of the deal. Carnival has agreed to refund the government for any profits beyond those agreed to in the contract.
Under the Waterline of Cruise Ship Deal
In an op-ed for The Seattle Times, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Was., says that Congress should enact a commission, similar to the Truman Commission of World War II, to ensure proper oversight of Katrina-recovery spending.
Federal relief efforts a fiscal disaster
While the Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it will create a procurement control board to oversee Katrina-recovery expenditures, some legislators say the government's initiative is inadequate.
Congress seeks to codify post-Katrina contracting restrictions
October 3, 2005
A U.S. News & World Reports article analyzes the challenges faced by the inspectors general of several federal agencies as they try make sense of Katrina-related contracts.
A Federal Times article looks at the government's poor reporting of Katrina contracting activity.
Katrina contracts leave incomplete, inaccurate audit trail
The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., reports that Rep. Bennie Thompson, R-Miss., will call for a federal investigation on the $40 million no-bid contract for the construction of temporary classrooms awarded to a Akima Site Operations, politically connected Alaska Native company. Its parent, NANA Regional Corp., was profiled in the Center for Public Integrity's report "Outsourcing the Pentagon."
Congressman wants probe of no-bid contract
"Outsourcing the Pentagon" profile on NANA Regional Corp.
The Department of Labor has issued a memorandum that suspends affirmative action requirements in the contracting process for post-Katrina projects.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/ofccp/pdf/Katrina1.pdf 
On Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its weekly report on the Hurricane Katrina Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill.
http://www.usace.army.mil/transcripts/KatrinaRpt_SAB_092905.pdf
September 30, 2005
The New York Times reports that questions are being raised about FEMA's sluggish progress in housing displaced families despite its huge temporary housing contract awards.
Housing for Storm's Evacuees Lagging Far Behind U.S. Goals
Greece's offer of the free use of ships for evacuee housing was turned down and instead FEMA signed a $236 million contract with Carnival Cruise Lines. Sens. Barack Obama and Tom Coburn are asking Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff why the Greek offer wasn't accepted.
See Chicago Tribune article: Senators ask why U.S. paying when free ships offered
See USA Today article: Carnival CEO defends cruise ship deal for hurricane evacuees
Senators want cruise ship deal explained
Rep. Bennie Thompson says that the government is paying more than twice what it should for temporary classrooms in a $39.5 million no-bid contract awarded under special provisions to Akima Site Operations, and Alaska Native company that is a subsidiary of NANA Regional Corp. NANA Regional Corp. and its subsidiary NANA Pacific LLC have been profiled in previous Center for Public Integrity reports.
Mississippi Classroom Contract Questioned
Alaska firm gets Gulf rebuilding job
The Washington Post reports that the Bush administration's outsourcing initiative could face problems in the wake of the arrest of a top procurement official.
Arrest of Procurement Policy Chief Could Undercut Contracting-Out Agenda
September 29, 2005
Following up on yesterday's congressional hearings, several publications report on the testimony of several agency inspector generals, including that of the Department of Homeland Security's Richard Skinner, who told Congress that he was concerned over the award of several no-bid contracts.
No-Bid Contracts To Get Close Look
Katrina contracts worth billions raise worries about waste
Katrina contracts worth billions raise worries about waste
Homeland Security's chief oversight official also told representatives yesterday that the initial $15 million allotment was insufficient to police Katrina contracts and that more funds would be needed:
Homeland Security to request additional funds for Katrina oversight
The Government Accountability Office has posted testimony and highlights from yesterday's hearings on its Web site.
Koch Membrane Systems, a subsidiary of conservative patron Koch Industries, is helping FEMA and the military purify water in Biloxi, Miss. The Center for Public Integrity's reporting on Koch and the oil industry was among the winners announced at the Society of Environmental Journalists award ceremony last night.
Gulf storms put Koch's water filters to the test
Center for Public Integrity "Politics of Oil" report: Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power
Winners: SEJ 4th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment
Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power
Winners: SEJ 4th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment
Several publications report on the scramble for aid among Gulf Coast state officials, lobbyists and contractors, including Government Executive's report on Monday's Washington, D.C.-area Katrina Reconstruction Summit.
See Associated Press article: Gulf Coast governors press Congress for aid
See Wall Street Journal article: Katrina Galvanizes Lobbyists As Costly Rebuilding Begins (subscription required)
See Government Executive article: Officials fear contracting abuses in wake of Hurricane Katrina
Officials fear contracting abuses in wake of Hurricane Katrina
September 28, 2005
Few Katrina-related contracts were announced today. News coverage focused on the grilling of former Federal Emergency Management chief Michael Brown in yesterday's congressional hearings and the resignation of New Orleans' police chief. News organizations continued to look into existing contracts, especially the awarding of one worth a potential $236 million to Carnival Cruise Lines and a $568 million award to Ashbritt, client of the former firm of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Government auditors from several agencies have promised Congress that no-bid contracts and purchases on government credit-cards will be investigated.
See Associated Press article: Government auditors to probe Katrina deals
See Washington Post article: $236 Million Cruise Ship Deal Criticized
The Washington Post looks into complaints about the Carnival award:
$236 Million Cruise Ship Deal Criticized
While visiting Miami, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff indicated that Katrina-related contracts could be canceled or payments withheld if the deals did not measure up. However, he avoided responding to questions regarding former FEMA head Michael Brown's testimony as to whether federal, state or local authorities were to blame for the poor response to Katrina.
In Miami, Chertoff sidesteps questions about response to Katrina
The post-Katrina lobbying blitz among prospective contractors is picking up speed, according to newspaper reports.
See Washington Post article: Lobbies Line Up For Relief Riches
See Wall Street Journal article: Industries Angle for Share in Relief Package (subscription required)
September 27, 2005
Michael Brown is back at the Federal Emergency Management Agency working as a consultant to the agency he was recently forced out of, according to news reports. Newspaper editorials also criticize the coziness of relationships between those giving and receiving contracts, following up on yesterday's New York Times article that reported that many awards were granted without full competition.
See CNN article: Brown serving as consultant to FEMA
See New York Times article: Cronies at the Till
See USA Today article: No-bid storm contracts prompt warnings
The Washington Post reports that FEMA plans to compensate some religious groups for the expenses incurred in Katrina relief efforts. Critics contend the action may be an unconstitutional breach of the wall between church and state.
FEMA Plans to Reimburse Faith Groups for Aid
September 26, 2005
Today's must-read Katrina-related story is the New York Times' detailed analysis of contract awards. The Times reports that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded more than $1 billion in contracts with little or no competition. The Homeland Security inspector general raises concerns about how some of the contracts were awarded.
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reported on the criticism of Carnival Cruise Lines' $236 million deal to house evacuees on ships. The article included Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman's letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff calling for more information on the contract.
Ships' Housing Deal Is Under Scrutiny
FEMA has allowed its reserve workforce to dwindle in favor of hiring less effective contract workers, according to the Washington Post, which also reports on Louisiana's drive to snare more federal aid:
FEMA Let Reserves Wither, Hurting Response, Some Say
Louisiana Goes After Federal Billions
September 23, 2005
While some contract awards surfaced today and yesterday, most major announcements and reporting have been shunted aside as the Gulf Coast prepares for the expected onslaught of Hurricane Rita.
The Dallas Morning News reports on FEMA's mismanagement of relief funds in a story replete with mentions and new details about contracted companies, including Circle B Enterprises, Gulfstream Coach, Integrated Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, Landstar System Inc. and Morgan Buildings, Spas & Pools:
After the storm, FEMA accused of wastefulness
The Associated Press reports that government auditors are questioning open-ended contracts to Halliburton and other subsidiaries:
Auditors targeting open-ended Katrina contracts
In the days before Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, local, state and federal officials held a series of telephone conference calls aimed at coordinating their responses to the storm. The sessions were recorded by Walter Maestri, emergency manager for Jefferson Parish, who shared them with National Public Radio. In tapes of the disaster planning meetings, NPR reportds that emergency managers and civic officials evinced a growing concern with the strengthening hurricane's possible effects, and after the storm made landfall, a growing frustration with the aid effort mounted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Conference Calls Detail Katrina Concerns, Failings (article and audio)
FEMA efforts to house roughly 200,000 evacuees are mired in logistical, bureaucratic and political tangles, according to the Washington Post:
Housing the Displaced Is Rife With Delays
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said yesterday that the nation's piecemeal emergency communications should be replaced with a new system, The Washington Post reports.
Crisis Communications Network Criticized
As a panel of House Republicans began an inquiry Thursday into what its chairman described as the ''largely abysmal'' government response to Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana's congressional delegation proposed a broad recovery plan that they estimated would cost $250 billion, The New York Times reports.
Louisiana Lawmakers Propose $250 Billion Recovery Package
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced legislation yesterday that would limit the liability of contractors working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Washington Post reports.
Bill Would Limit Firms' Liability (fifth item)
September 22, 2005
House Republicans are moving ahead to investigate the government's response to Katrina without Democrats, who are calling for an independent investigation, The New York Times reports.
G.O.P. in House Plans Inquiry Despite Democrats' Boycott
September 20, 2005
The Washington Post reports that contractors working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts for the federal government want Congress to limit their liability from lawsuits. And they are drafting legislation to seek just that protection, industry officials said yesterday
Federal Contractors Seek Liability Shields
September 16, 2005
Many of todays newspapers feature articles about the questions regarding overall rebuilding costs:
Economists, Housing Experts Question Proposals (The Washington Post)
G.O.P. Split Over Big Plans for Storm Spending (The New York Times)
Conservatives Balk As Spending Soars In Katrina's Wake (The Wall Street Journal, subscription required)
USA TODAY explores continuing logjams in the use of contracted relief efforts and Jim Drinkard offers a rundown on some relief spending so far.
Help is on the way, but it's unclear where
U.S. government has doled out $13.7B on Katrina relief
Yesterday's Washington Post ran an analysis of spending misgivings.
Bush to Request More Aid Funding
The Department of Homeland Security has named a "special inspector general" to handle Hurricane Katrina relief, Sen. Susan Collins told FOX News on Thursday. But the Maine Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said she didn't think the gesture goes far enough.
Katrina Inspector General Appointed
The Washington Post takes a look at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' "handshake deals" with Bertucci Construction, Fordice Construction and the Shaw Group.