Lafourche feels FEMA pinch

The impact of Hurricane Irene was felt in Lafourche Parish, where officials worry that more than $11 million in appropriated disaster protection funds are frozen as FEMA pinches the pennies remaining in its Disaster Recovery Fund.

The East Coast hurricane is expected to cost FEMA about $1.5 billion. In order to maximize the money remaining in the DRF, which reportedly was less than $800 million as of late last week, FEMA implemented Immediate Needs Funding.

INF will delay payments from specific disaster funding programs, such as the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, while placing the urgency on emergency response to Hurricane Irene and the wildfires in Texas.

Lafourche Parish Government spokesman Brennan Matherne said FEMA owes the parish approximately $11.5 million.

“We feel for those people, but they can find money elsewhere without taking that money away from us,” Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph said.

Prior to, and in order to delay, implementing INF, FEMA de-obligated “funds from unexpended contract obligations that have remained in the DRF for past disasters.”

“Our immediate focus is to continue doing everything we can to support our state and local partners as they respond to Irene and meet the immediate needs of disaster survivors, and we have the resources needed to do this,” FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen wrote in a blog post. “To make sure we have all the resources we need to do this, FEMA is placing some funding restrictions on longer-term repair, rebuilding and mitigation projects from previous and current disasters that are funded through our Disaster Relief Fund.”

FEMA would not respond to specific questions, and instead referenced the blog post.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) told the Tri-Parish Times she has spent the past eight months urging President Obama that FEMA needed additional funding.

Landrieu, who chairs the subcommittee of Department of Homeland Security Appropriations, approved the U.S. Senate’s $41 billion DHS spending bill last week.

The bill would allocate $6 billion for FEMA but wouldn’t go into effect until the 2012 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

“One of the things we’re going to really try hard in the next week or two is to find a way to provide additional funding for the 2011 needs, which we think there is a shortfall between $500 million and $1.5 billion,” Landrieu said.

Plus, the 2012 Homeland Security spending bill has to be approved through negotiation with the U.S. House of Representatives, making funding contingent on the polarized political climate.

“Coming Oct. 1, the fund will be replenished significantly,” Landrieu said. “We’re going to try to avoid the slow walk the next few weeks. If we can’t, the good news is the fund will be replenished.”

Rep. Jeff Landry (R-New Iberia) said FEMA is partaking in “gamesmanship” by utilizing a common strategy among bureaucracies.

“They try to find areas to hurt people on one side of the coin so that they go to their congressman and yell and scream and then they get, at the end of the day, that agency of bureaucrats gets more money,” Landry said. “Certainly on projects where the money has been appropriated, on projects that we need here in Louisiana, that we continue to move those projects forward, that’s our commitment. “

FEMA implemented INF each year from 2003-06 and again in 2010.

“The limitation applies to specific disaster funding (e.g. Hazard Mitigation Program and Public Assistance Categories C-G), as well as DRF surge and disaster support activities,” FEMA said in a news release about INF. “Funding is not being eliminated for projects in these categories, but merely delayed until additional appropriations are available.”

Although the disaster response agency already promised funds for several projects, the money is paid on a phase-by-phase basis.

Lafourche received $60,000 for the first phase of the Point-aux-Chenes Flood Protection Project in May, for example, but the second phase can’t be approved until the first, a land and drainage study, is complete.

It was not immediately known how much of the $11.5 million promised to Lafourche would be frozen.

“You’re correct in that, yes, some of the FEMA projects are being held up,” Landrieu said. “That’s wrong. It should not be happening, and we are scrambling to try to fix it.”