Bipartisan push for flood relief
6th September 2016 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer
Governor John Bel Edwards and the Pelican State’s congressional delegation have asked the federal government to accept both a larger share of the cost for flood response and recovery—and to count south Louisiana’s August deluge and the earlier flooding in March in Northern and Central Louisiana as one disaster.
This could open the door for a higher federal match, and potentially more overall appropriations for relief. However, one of the co-signatories of the request, Congressman Cedric Richmond (D-New Orleans) tells The Louisiana Weekly that he worries that GOP opposition to Superstorm Sandy relief (without corresponding budget cuts) in the past by members of the LA Delegation might endanger House and Senate action this year.
REP. CEDRIC RICHMOND
The first part of the delegation’s request, made to FEMA, is expected to have a favorable reply.
Almost from day one of the recovery, the Obama Administration’s response has been fantastic, Richmond notes, observing in the first three days after the August flooding, “we had three cabinet secretaries down here and a general.” Richmond also speaks highly of the work of FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, to whom the delegation members Republican Sens. David Vitter and Bill Cassidy and Reps. Ralph Abraham, R-Alto; Steve Scalise, R-Metairie; John Fleming, R-Minden; and Charles Boustany, R-Lafayette, as well as Richmond made the most recent request.
In a letter sent on Aug. 26, the legislators asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator to bump up their share of federal re-imbursement from 75 percent to 90 percent and include both floods as one. As an example, Abraham has seen 22 of the 24 parishes in his 5th District declared major disasters in the March and August floods.
“We’ve been hurt mightily by these two disasters,” Abraham tells the News-Star Newspaper. “We are all Louisianans. We want to make sure nobody gets left out of the box.”
To understand the depth of the disasters, in the last year, all six LA congressional districts contain at least one parish that flooded, some twice in both storms. This past March, 36 parishes were declared federal disaster areas followed by another 20 in the August flood, yet the latter storm more deeply encountered highly populated areas—such as the Baton Rouge suburbs—impacting more homeowners.
FEMA employs a formula to determine its share of disaster recoveries. To reach a 90 percent share, damage must reach the level of $137 per capita. With 4.6 million people in Louisiana, the total would have to reach $637 million. “We’ll shatter that in both events,” Abraham has told the News-Star Newspaper.
The problem is that even if the Obama Administration approves the first request, Congress will still have to appropriate more money—and authorize FEMA to exceed its own $33,000 per person limit. As Richmond outlines to The Louisiana Weekly even if FEMA can act on the first matter, “It was Congress that capped the FEMA aid at now $33K, and it’s going to be Congress that now has to appropriate any money for CDBG to do a housing program. It most likely will have to come through Congress. Now, I know that I don’t have to remind you – but, let’s go back to Superstorm Sandy – because my fear was that this day would come.”
“We had a government and we had members of our congressional delegation that took the position that before we sent money to Superstorm Sandy relief, that we had to find a place in government to cut. That we had to have a paid for—or offset—for their disaster money. Now, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, [and] Pennsylvania, you’re talking about a big delegation that we now have to go to and say, ‘Hey guys, we now need some appropriations,’ and then we broke for August recess. They went 60 days before we appropriated any money for their recovery. Now, do I think that we’re going to be able to get it done? Yes, but it’s going to be an act of Congress. The president can’t do it without Congress passing a bill.”
And it will take time, time of which displaced homeowners have little. That was the essence of Richmond’s call for “No More Road Homes” multi-month/year delays. Unlike some, the Congressman maintains, “I don’t think that the Road Home was corrupt. I just think that it was a bureaucratic nightmare with far too much overhead than necessary. And, if you look at Mississippi, which I think went a little bit over and beyond in terms of the government just giving everybody $150,000, but I think that there is a very easy, systematic way to find out the need of homeowners and getting them the money to fulfill their unmet needs.”
“So, I’m not saying that government does not have a role with FEMA capped at $33,000 a person. I know that there is going to be a large unmet need, and I think that government has a role, but I am not interested in a program as massive, as bureaucratic, and as complicated as Road Home turned out to be.”
If Congress does approve Community Development Block Grants in the billion dollar ranges needed to repair the damage of the August and March storms, above FEMA’s $33,000 limits, there is a long-term problem. Very few of these homes had flood insurance, and other disaster coverages will likely skyrocket after two back-to-back disasters.
To keep insurance rates affordable, former Congressman Charlie Melancon had proposed a solution several years ago that earned the support of Cedric Richmond, and of Steve Scalise, and most of the GOP members of the Louisiana delegation. However, every time it has been re-introduced, opposition in Congress has killed the reform.
To ameliorate skyrocketing property insurance rates, a bipartisan group of legislators from U.S. coastal regions have proposed to include storm and disaster private insurance into a federally re-insured plan. It would work differently from Federal Flood Insurance Program, which is wholly government-run. Instead, the Federal Government would re-insure any insurance claims above $5 billion, allowing underwriters to sell less expensive private policies to homeowners, since the risk exposure for the large insurance providers would amount to far less should a natural catastrophe occur. They wouldn’t be threatened with bankruptcy.
Such a re-insurance program is already in place, in point of fact, for terrorism coverage. The storm converges would simply be included in the existing terrorism re-insurance program to provide a risk cap for underwriters for wind, hail, and other storm disaster relief. In fact, to draw Congress-ional support, this bipartisan group has also suggested that earthquake policies could also be federally re-insured as part of the package.
However, Tea Party opposition has stopped the reinsurance efforts in their tracks. In fact, there is a move to abolish federal underwriting of current flood policies as well.
As Richmond observes, “We won’t have [reinsurance] as long as Jeb Hensarling is Chair of Financial Services in Congress. He is ideologically opposed to the National Flood Insurance Program period. And, he has tapped Rep. [Blaine] Luetkemeyer [R-Missouri] to craft the new solution for National Flood Insurance Program, and it does not include federally backed re-insurance. It actually removes the NFIP, and sends it back to the private market. Which we know, in Louisiana, we would not get one affordable insurance policy—if they tried to send it out to the private market, and they tried to make it actuarially sound.”
So no reform, and perhaps no flood insurance at all if Hersarling gets his way. “Maybe in a new Congress, with a new Chair, but fighting Hensarling,” not now. Yet, Richmond was quick to note that his Louisiana Republican colleagues, particularly the GOP Whip from Metairie, were strong allies in the insurance fight—as they are in the battle to increase funds from FEMA. “[Steve] Scalise and I joined to together to pass Biggert-Waters Reform over the objection of Hensarling…Most of the Republi-can members of Congress are pretty bipartisan…I don’t think I’ve ever lost an amendment when I joined with one of my Louisiana Republican colleagues.”
In contrast, Richmond believes the federal response and support of the White House has been fantastic.
This article originally published in the September 5, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
