House rejects bids to add money to budget for hurricane recovery

AP-Lawmakers from hurricane-damaged areas made little headway Thursday in their attempts to steer more state dollars to recovery efforts and to fill in part of the shortfall in the post-hurricane Road Home grant program.

During House debate on a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, repeated attempts to boost spending in the parishes with damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita failed. Lawmakers added small amounts of new dollars for the hurricane impacted areas, but then also shifted much more money away from a fund designed to help hurricane evacuees.

Rep. John Alario, who as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee handles the annual budget bill, pledged to continue working on ways to help speed hurricane recovery efforts as the budget for the new year that begins July 1 moves over to the Senate for debate.

As approved by the House, the $29.6 billion budget proposal for next year includes more than $8 billion in direct federal aid for the 2005 hurricanes, plus additional state spending to help restart health care services and educational programs interrupted by Katrina and Rita.

However, attempts to shuffle dollars to the Road Home program, which provides grants to homeowners with severe damage from the storms, were rejected. The program faces a shortfall of $3 billion or more because it has more eligible applicants than expected.

Alario, D-Westwego, who lives in the New Orleans area, said Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration and lawmakers were trying to find sources of state cash to at least partially plug the Road Home hole while seeking additional help from the federal government. He said negotiations were ongoing, and he opposed efforts to move dollars to the program n though he added that he found it difficult to oppose hurricane recovery proposals.

Lawmakers from the New Orleans area said the state n which has record amounts of income n needed to show that it was making an effort to solve the problems with the Road Home so that federal officials would also agree to help the program from going broke.

“This does not fix the problem, but what it does is send a message that we’re attempting to fix the problem,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans.

Repeated attempts to move dollars to the Road Home failed, along with proposals to spend more money on rebuilding fire, police and emergency medical services and on universities that were damaged by the hurricanes.

But the House agreed, in a 54-48 vote, to move $67 million from a $78 million fund proposed by the Blanco administration to help hurricane evacuees with the costs of moving back home. The governor’s office said it would be a program whose costs would be shared by the state and FEMA, though FEMA officials have only said it was a concept being discussed with Louisiana officials.

The House moved the $67 million to road repairs and construction, after supporters of the switch said the evacuee program was vague and didn’t protect against fraud.

“We don’t know if those people are ever going to decide to come back,” said Rep. Hunter Greene, R-Baton Rouge.

Richmond said the evacuee fund was a possible source of money to help with the Road Home.

“We’re for roads, but let’s not choose roads over people,” he said, but lost the vote.

Lawmakers did agree to a proposal by Alario to use nearly $7 million in state cash to help the New Orleans Police Department with equipment and recruiting costs to increase its crime-fighting tactics after Hurricane Katrina.

The police department n struggling to cope with a rise in crime and a loss of officers since the 2005 storm n asked for the dollars for bulletproof vests for incoming police recruits, armored vehicles, mobile command units and buses for large deployments of officers.

The budget bill is filed as House Bill 1 and can be found at http://www.legis.state.la.us