After the devastating back-to-back blows of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana’s leaders created a far-reaching state bureaucracy to manage and devise multibillion dollar recovery plans for wrecked southern parishes.
More than four years later, part of that bureaucracy, the Louisiana Recovery Authority, is slated to disappear, but $3 billion in federal block grant recovery aid remains unspent.
Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration and lawmakers are haggling over how those remaining dollars should be divvied up, who should determine the spending plans and how much oversight the Legislature should get.
A pair of bills by House Speaker Jim Tucker would shift much of that money to local parishes and away from state control – and inject lawmakers into the decision-making over hurricane recovery contracts.
If changes aren’t made to the recovery spending plans, Tucker said, the New Orleans area will be left with miles of flood-destroyed and blighted homes and a city infrastructure wrecked by Katrina that hasn’t been repaired.
“I think the overarching concern of mine and many people in this building is: Will we blow through all this money and not (be) recovered? We have never taken the opportunity in the last four years to reevaluate our original decisions,” said Tucker, R-Terrytown.
Robin Keegan, executive director of the LRA and a Jindal appointee, said while the money isn’t all spent, it’s locked in to recovery programs for rental housing repair, homeowner rebuilding assistance, school repair and local infrastructure aid.
She argues that changes now could slow down recovery efforts, rather than help them.
“I think we’re spending money, and I think we’re working with each parish, each developer, each landlord and each school board to help them spend this money quickly, with the reality that there are federal restrictions and we have had a steep learning curve,” she said.
At issue is the remaining slice of the $13.4 billion in federal flexible aid funds, called Community Development Block Grant money, given to Louisiana by Congress after Katrina and Rita devastated New Orleans and the state’s coast in 2005.
More than $9.3 billion has been spent on aid to homeowners. Other funds were targeted for businesses, fisheries, infrastructure and a variety of other programs. Then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco created the LRA to design and oversee the programs, many of which are continuing under Jindal.
The LRA’s authorization expires on July 1, though much of the bureaucracy created is being folded into the Jindal administration to continue oversight of the recovery spending.
Tucker said aid programs devised after Katrina and Rita were done by state leaders who had never experienced disaster on such a horrific scale and had no knowledge of how best to build a recovery.
“It was nothing more than a good guess, and we got some of them right and we got some of them wrong,” he said.
One of Tucker’s bills would ensure the Legislature maintains its existing approval requirements over recovery spending done by the governor’s administration after the LRA disappears.
It also would add new layers of oversight: requiring approval of recovery contracts over $50,000 by the Legislature’s joint budget committee and mandating the budget committee re-evaluate all existing state-run recovery programs by the end of the year.
The second bill would reallocate unspent recovery money to local parishes, if the parishes decide they would prefer to run recovery programs themselves.
Tucker said that would be similar to how the LRA handled federal aid after hurricanes Gustav and Ike struck in 2008. The recovery authority divvied up much of that money among parishes to largely decide the spending on their own. The parish plans required LRA approval.
The Jindal administration says Tucker’s bill would go further, letting the parishes run recovery programs without the same state management they receive now. The bill would leave the state on the hook for misspent money with little oversight of the spending, said Barbara Goodson, deputy commissioner with the governor’s Division of Administration.
Keegan noted that in instances where parishes have been given large set-asides of money after both the 2005 and 2008 storms, they still are working to spend those funds and need state assistance to meet the voluminous federal strings tied to the money.
She questioned whether Tucker’s ideas for reshuffling the money could get the federal approvals needed. Tucker said his bill would meet the federal requirements, and he said any reallocation would have to be approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development before it could begin.
House Bills 1173 and 1175 can be found at www.legis.state.la.us
Topics Legislation Louisiana
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