NPR Missed the Political Boat on Bush's Buyout Program

by Ana Maria

Last week, I became aghast at NPR’s story “Feds Propose Massive Buyout for Mississippi Coast.” What a remarkable contrast between NPR failure to provide a full picture of life on the ground here in Bay St. Louis—the target of Bush’s buyout and the home town of Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS), and Bill Moyer's reporting on PBS titled Recovery Gone Wrong? regarding the horrendous obstacles severely hindering our vibrant recovery.

NPR’s story didn’t air any response from Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS), who has been a tireless and outspoken advocate for South Mississippi’s recovery efforts AND who lives in the very town that is the target of Bush’s proposed $40 billion buyout boondoggle. I'm sure that Taylor would have been more than willing to interview about such a critical matter in his district, his hometown at that. Besides, he interviews well and makes for great quotes. Taylor’s public response to Bush’s proposal is more than telling and proves my point.

"Five words: 'It ain't going to happen,' " says Rep. Gene Taylor (D) of Mississippi, who's in the midst of rebuilding his Bay St. Louis home. "There's no money for it, there's no will for it, and there's no public support for it. That's 0 for 3."

NPR missed the simple fact that Bush’s proposed $40 billion federal buyout program has no Congressional support. However, NPR provided plenty of time for Bush's agency to spout the White House talking points on the matter. Yet, not a smidgen to Congressman Taylor. [Note to NPR: How about a follow up interview with Taylor to provide the balance that this story failed to achieve?]

NPR’s story also missed the bigger picture, which yours truly wrote last month in the Bay St. Louis political blog A.M. in the Morning!

Can it be merely coincidental that Bush’s buyout plan is targeting the hometown of the man spearheading the effort to ensure that whenever an American family or business owner purchases insurance for both wind and flood, that they actually get paid on their wind policy for the damages wind causes? In a word, no.

With so much airtime dedicated to the Corps’ mouthpieces, NPR didn’t apparently found not time to view the excerpts of Taylor's Insurance Reform Town Hall meeting uploaded on YouTube.


Not a single member of that panel talking before a standing-room only capacity venue spoke about a need for the federal government to wall off the beach and pay to haul us off of our land and out of our homes. Not ONE. Telling, isn't it?

Rather, everyone of the panelists—which included the local chamber, regional bank chair, and vice-president of the state wind pool—spoke about the fact that we need the ability to purchase a single wind-water insurance policy so that we can rebuild our homes, our lives, and our communities. They spoke of the immense hardship that the insurance industry has placed on the families and small business owners.

Had Bush ensured that the insurance industry live up to the financial obligations to its customers and actually paid off on the wind coverage of the homeowner insurance policies, the only kind of press that Bush’s Corps would be receiving would be the kind that mock its utter stupidity.

Rather the story could center upon this question.

Why on earth would Bush’s federal agency propose buying up homes and businesses that had already been rebuilt—to better standards, of course—and do so long after everything had been returned to normalcy, long after the party decorations celebrating the remarkably vibrant recovery been put away?!

So what is preventing our remarkably vibrant recovery? PBS reported on certain quintessential elements.

“ . . .critical to short-term recovery: construction-sector capacity; availability of funds to finance recovery; and an adequate supply of housing, especially affordable housing, for those whom the storm displaced from their residences.”

No one is suggesting much less saying that we need a $40 billion government home buy out program. No one.

However, what has actually occurred is an unanticipated, unstated insurance industry bailout. Yes, an unstated insurance industry bailout. The recovery hasn’t occurred because the financing that home and business owners had expected to receive from their insurance companies didn’t come through because the insurance companies essentially swindled those policy funds from us.

Last week, NBC reported on the Bush White House spending upwards of over $200,000 for many of FEMA’s formaldehyde-filled, Barbie doll-sized trailers—housing money that the insurance industry should have paid out of the cost of living end of the homeowner insurance coverage. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report in which it had analyzed FEMA costs for trailers in Mississippi only. It found $30 million in wasted funding here in Republican Governor Haley Barbour’s state.

PBS reported that Barbour, the once powerful corporate lobbyist and former RNC chair, had successfully gotten his strong connections in DC to waive many of the requirements on the federal money Congress had allocated for Mississippi’s recovery. Other states, such as our neighboring Louisiana, were not afforded this luxury.

Of course, here along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we have no sense of luxury. Heck, from homes to gas stations, essentials remain absent. Plenty of families remain unable to go home for their home remains uninhabitable or non-existent. There still remains not a single gas station along the 30 plus beach front miles on Highway 90 from Pass Christian to Biloxi, Miss.

What Barbour has done of late is propose scurrying away $600 million of the lower income housing funds to pay for the rebuilding and expansion of the state’s port in Gulfport, Miss.

Look, everyone wants that port rebuilt, and expansion sounds pretty good, as well. Just not on the backs of the lower income families in South Mississippi.

As PBS pointed out, as the once powerful corporate lobbyist and former powerful chair of the Republican National Committee, Barbour has access to plenty of capitol without touching the money Congress had intended for the housing needs for South Mississippi lower income families. Barbour can surely to goodness find the money for the expansion from elsewhere and not steal away the dreams of Mississippi families rebuilding their homes and coming back to their lives built up over years here in South Mississippi.

NPR also mentioned that the Corps talked to 20 people at its Gulfport meeting. Again NPR failed to mention that the Corps’ meeting here in Bay St. Louis drew a crowd of many hundreds furious at the idea of walling off our town and hauling off its residents—and the Corps had very poorly advertised the meeting. Imagine the turnout if it had actually wanted us to know of its secret program?

The real story is that the Corps of Engineers would not have a political leg to stand on had Bush merely used the bully pulpit to bully his corporate buddies in the insurance industry to pay up on their financial obligations regarding the wind coverage of home and commercial business owners’ insurance policies.

Bush should have leveraged the power of the bully pulpit to call press conferences which would have been viewed on every television news program, read in every newspaper, and heard on every radio program. Bush should have banged the drum that the American people expect the ‘good hands’ and ‘good neighbor’ companies to do right by the American families and businesses, families and businesses that continue to be responsible for the profits those companies fully enjoy . . . THEN we wouldn’t be having any discussion of how NPR missed the proverbial boat on the story’s real context regarding Bush’s politically-motivated, revenge-filled buyout plan.

What's the revenge part?

In September of this year, Taylor has already successfully led the effort to successfully pass overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives and with bi-partisan support (263 - 146), his landmark legislation to provide wind coverage as an option to the nation's flood insurance program. It is only a matter of time before it passes the Senate and is signed into law by the President--even if it means we wait until 2009 with a Democratic President of the United States in the White House.

Taylor's landmark Multiple Peril Legislation protects home and business owners from the ravages of Big Insurance greed. Corporate greed is like oxygen to the Bush Administration's Big campaign contributors. Taylor's legislation potentially removes billions of dollars of profit, which the greedy gutted goons in insurance corporations have been able to swindle from us carte blanch.

Targeting Taylor's hometown with a bogus $40 billion buyout program is political revenge straight out of Karl Rove's political playbook.

© 2007 Ana Maria Rosato. All rights reserved.
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GAO blasts FEMA costs for trailers

November 17, 2007
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JACKSON --What will $229,000 cover in the Mississippi real estate market?

Try a five-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home in the capital city of Jackson. Or a 280-square-foot temporary FEMA trailer on the Katrina-ravaged Coast.

A government report issued Friday says "ineffective oversight" by FEMA caused about $30 million in "wasteful and improper or potentially fraudulent payments" to contractors between June 2006 and January 2007, including expenses for some temporary trailer sites.

Some FEMA trailers are on private property, such as the front yards of people's homes. Others are in group sites, or temporary trailer parks, that were set up after the storm to provide shelter to people who lost apartments or rental homes.

Katrina damaged or destroyed 134,000 homes and 10,000 rental units in Mississippi, according to the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The report does not include spending or provide statistics for Louisiana.

The GAO report says FEMA will spend an average of $30,000 on each Katrina trailer on a private site through March 2009, when the government plans to close the temporary housing.

But at a temporary trailer park set up after Katrina at Port Bienville Park in Hancock County, the report says expenses for one trailer could hit $229,000. That covers costs for FEMA to buy, haul and install each trailer and to lay out, construct and maintain the group site.

"Part of the reason for this expense is that FEMA placed only eight trailers at the Bienville site," the GAO said. "FEMA wastes money when it operates sites with such a small number of trailers because GSM (group-site maintenance) costs are fixed whether a site contains 1 or 50 trailer pads."

The GAO compared the cost of a Port Bienville trailer to a five-bedroom home in Jackson.

FEMA responded it agrees with all of the GAO's recommendations in the report, including one to evaluate whether money can be saved in the placement and maintenance of trailers.

Steven J. Pecinovsky, director of the Departmental Audit Liaison Office for FEMA, wrote that most people who receive temporary housing after a disaster want to stay close to where they had lived.

"As some of the disaster victims are renters, the agency does set up group sites and utilizes existing commercial sites in order to house them in their pre-disaster community," Pecinovsky wrote in the FEMA response, which was included in the GAO report.

The GAO says FEMA gave contracts for group-site maintenance to two companies that did not appear to have met a requirement to submit independent bids. The companies had the same president and accountant, and the companies shared price information before submitting proposals to FEMA, the GAO says.

Pecinovsky said FEMA will evaluate whether contractors were overpaid.


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Bush’s FEMA Smells Kinda Fishy

by Ana Maria

Since moving into the White House in January 2001, the Bush Administration has been spending our tax dollars like drunken sailors on leave for a weekend in the French Quarter. Drunk with stupidity or the arrogance of power or both, Bush’s FEMA wants to be let off the hook when it comes to the costs for restocking the New Orleans Aquarium. Their refusal just didn’t pass the smell test, and now we find out just how fishy Bush’s FEMA is.

Bush’s White House is used to overpaying its high roller campaign contributors. Katrina’s aftermath provided another pond into which Bush, Cheney and their high-roller supporters could fish for the most inflatable opportunities. FEMA’s formaldehyde-filled trailers are one such example.

In south Mississippi at one point we had 40,000 people living in FEMA trailers, we're grateful for every one of them. But those trailers were delivered by a friend of the president by the name of Riley Bechtel, a major contributor to Bush administration. He got $16,000 to haul a trailer the last 70 miles from Purvis, Miss., down to the Gulf Coast, hook it up to a garden hose, hook it up to a sewer tap, and plug it in, $16,000.

Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS)
House of Representatives debate, March 22, 2007

[Watch the video in which Taylor expertly filets Republican Congressman Tom Price on yet another pathetically uncompassionate proposal from that side of the aisle.]

OVERbilling is the kind of innovative and creative skills Bush and Cheney’s Administration reward. In the case of the New Orleans Aquarium, the Aquarium’s innovative and creative skills led them to go out to sea and catch the fish "the old fashioned way, hooks and nets." The cost? $90,000.

What keeps rolling around in my head is this line.

FEMA would have been willing to pay more than $600,000 for the fish if they had been bought from commercial suppliers.

What?! This is so nuts. Yes, I know that this is THE most corrupt and incompetent administrations in my lifetime. Thankfully, their corruption and incompetence hasn’t tarnished my internal compass of what I expect and desire—and am willing to work on behalf of—in public officials be they elected or appointed.

What gets me is that I know full well that the reason stupid decisions or foot-dragging at the lower levels of any government agency happens for one primary reason: management at the top tolerates, excepts, and/or promotes it. This administration is the poster child for this lesson in organizational behavior being set at the top and rolling down hill.

The New Orleans Aquarium is a major tourist attraction to this much beloved city. New Orleanians take great pride in it. Residents like my precious niece and her father—my brother—spend their precious free time volunteering for hours on end to help the city’s tourists enjoy this beautiful place.

Clearly, FEMA’s rationale for questioning these Aquarium costs is more than a bit fishy. Quite simply, FEMA’s foot dragging, nay-saying, red-tape creating, and obstacle course to reimbursing legitimate costs for the Aquarium as well as cities, states, and families smells to high heaven.

Requiring any of us to OVERSPEND tax dollars as if we are Bush’s best campaign buddies sucking at the government teat—to put it bluntly—stinks like dead fish.

© 2007 Ana Maria Rosato. All rights reserved.
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Aquarium tanks are full, but bill remains unpaid

Christina Nguyen takes a snapshot of a shark as friends Huy Nguyen and Tony Nguyen, all of New Orleans, visit the restocked Gulf of Mexico exhibit at the Aquarium last month.
STAFF PHOTO BY ELIOT KAMENITZ

By Mark Schleifstein
Staff writer
November 12, 2007

When black smoke stopped streaming from an emergency generator atop the Audubon Nature Institute's Aquarium of the Americas three days after Hurricane Katrina, it marked the death of more than 8,000 of the aquarium's occupants, from huge sharks to tiny jellyfish.

Without electricity, pumps used to supply oxygen to watery exhibits throughout the aquarium went quiet, and suffocated fish quickly bobbed upside down on the surface of tanks throughout the building.

More than two years later, after an outpouring of donations from the public and from sister aquariums across the United States, the fish are swimming again in the wide variety of exhibits within the restored jewel on New Orleans' riverfront.

But aquarium officials say they're now drowning in federal bureaucracy, still wading through a series of nonsensical Federal Emergency Management Agency decisions that have held up requests for reimbursement of $90,000 in costs associated with restocking the exhibits with marine life.


Off Big Pine Key in Florida, Elizabeth Hayes captures a juvenile grunt for the Aquarium of the Americas in April 2006. Aquarium officials say FEMA decisions have held up reimbursement of $90,000 in costs associated with restocking the exhibits.

STAFF FILE PHOTO BY MICHAEL DeMOCKER

One of the city's top tourist attractions should be treated like other businesses devastated by Katrina, and allowed to recoup at least part of the cost of collecting the replacement specimens, said Audubon chief operating officer Dale Stastny.

At first, FEMA officials likened dead fish to irreplaceable works of art, like paintings lost in the flood, and declared them thus ineligible for reimbursement. Audubon officials quickly lobbied the agency to explain that, yes, fish die all the time at aquariums across the country, and are just as routinely replaced.

"We told them that, though emotionally it's true each fish is a unique living animal, none of them lives forever. And when they die, we replace them," he said.

The aquarium also showed FEMA officials where the federal agency reimbursed a Texas university for the cost of replacing a laboratory's stable of test rats killed in a similar flood -- at a much greater cost than the aquarium's fish expenses, Stastny said.

FEMA reluctantly relented, and aquarium officials then submitted a bill for expenses that had not already been reimbursed by insurance or through donations of fish by other aquariums.

That included the New Orleans aquarium's cost of transporting jellyfish from the New England Aquarium in Boston, and aquariums in Monterey, Calif., and Baltimore; five large sand tiger sharks from the Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and a school of more than 100 blue runner fish donated by the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

But the second sticking point for FEMA officials, apparently, came over excursions to the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and Chesapeake Bay, where Audubon staffers donned swimsuits, snorkels and scuba equipment -- and suntan oil -- to collect a wide variety of exotic fish ranging from gaudy tropical reef species and nurse sharks.

Stastny said buying the same fish on the open market, if they were available, would have cost close to $500,000 -- compared with the $90,000 in expenses they're trying to collect.

"Obviously, they're not going to pay us for what other aquariums gave us," Stastny said. "But what we're requesting is reimbursement of our staff time and the use of our equipment to go collect the fish."

FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson said the agency has not yet dismissed the aquarium's request.

"I do know that there are some expenses that are being looked at, and that could be deemed eligible to being reimbursed," Josephson said. "It was denied the first time, but they have the appeals process to go through, and it's being looked at.

"We're optimistic that that will result in a conclusion that both we and the aquarium can be happy with," he said.

Stastny remains guardedly optimistic.

"They did reimburse us for some of our other cleanup expenses," he said. "Now the task is helping them understand that -- if they can get past the idea of fish as a living collection of art, irreplaceable or not -- it's no different than debris removal."

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3327.


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FEMA wants to be let off the hook for reimbursement

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

By Mark Schleifstein

Staff writer

When black smoke stopped streaming from an emergency generator atop the Audubon Nature Institute's Aquarium of the Americas three days after Hurricane Katrina, it marked the death of more than 8,000 of the aquarium's occupants, from huge sharks to tiny jellyfish.

But aquarium officials say they're now drowning in federal bureaucracy, still wading through a series of nonsensical Federal Emergency Management Agency decisions that have held up requests for reimbursement of $90,000 in costs associated with restocking the exhibits with marine life.

One of the city's top tourist attractions should be treated like other businesses devastated by Katrina, and allowed to recoup at least part of the cost of collecting the replacement specimens, said Audubon chief operating officer Dale Stastny.

At first, FEMA officials likened dead fish to irreplaceable works of art, like paintings lost in the flood, and declared them thus ineligible for reimbursement. Audubon officials quickly lobbied the agency to explain that, yes, fish die all the time at aquariums across the country, and are just as routinely replaced.

"We told them that, though emotionally it's true each fish is a unique living animal, none of them lives forever. And when they die, we replace them," he said.

The aquarium also showed FEMA officials where the federal agency reimbursed a Texas university for the cost of replacing a laboratory's stable of test rats killed in a similar flood -- at a much greater cost than the aquarium's fish expenses, Stastny said.

FEMA reluctantly relented, and aquarium officials then submitted a bill for expenses that had not already been reimbursed by insurance or through donations of fish by other aquariums.

That included the New Orleans aquarium's cost of transporting jellyfish from the New England Aquarium in Boston, and aquariums in Monterey, Calif., and Baltimore; five large sand tiger sharks from the Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and a school of more than 100 blue runner fish donated by the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

But the second sticking point for FEMA officials, apparently, came over excursions to the Florida Keys, the Bahamas and Chesapeake Bay, where Audubon staffers donned swimsuits, snorkels and scuba equipment -- and suntan oil -- to collect a wide variety of exotic fish ranging from gaudy tropical reef species and nurse sharks.

Stastny said buying the same fish on the open market, if they were available, would have cost close to $500,000 -- compared with the $90,000 in expenses they're trying to collect.

"Obviously, they're not going to pay us for what other aquariums gave us," Stastny said. "But what we're requesting is reimbursement of our staff time and the use of our equipment to go collect the fish."

FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson said the agency has not yet dismissed the aquarium's request.

"I do know that there are some expenses that are being looked at, and that could be deemed eligible to being reimbursed," Josephson said. "It was denied the first time, but they have the appeals process to go through, and it's being looked at.

"We're optimistic that that will result in a conclusion that both we and the aquarium can be happy with," he said.

Stastny remains guardedly optimistic.

"They did reimburse us for some of our other cleanup expenses," he said. "Now the task is helping them understand that -- if they can get past the idea of fish as a living collection of art, irreplaceable or not -- it's no different than debris removal."

. . . . . . .

Mark Schleifstein can be reached at mschleifstein@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3327.

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N.O aquarium denied $$: FEMA doesn't like fish freshly caught

11/13/2007, 4:19 p.m. CST
By JOHN MORENO GONZALES
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In what some see as another bureaucratic absurdity after Hurricane Katrina, FEMA is refusing to pick up the cost of restocking New Orleans' aquarium because of how the new fish were obtained: straight from the sea.

FEMA would have been willing to pay more than $600,000 for the fish if they had been bought from commercial suppliers. But the agency is balking because the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas went out and replaced the dead fish the old fashioned way, with hooks and nets. That expedition saved the taxpayers a half-million dollars but did not comply with FEMA regulations.

"You get to the point where the red tape has so overwhelmed the process that there's not a lot you can do to actually be effective," Warren Eller, associate director of the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at Louisiana State University, said of FEMA's actions.

Katrina knocked out power to the tourist attraction at the edge of the French Quarter in August 2005, and the staff returned days four days later to find sharks, tropical fish, jellyfish and thousands of other creatures dead in their tanks.

Aquarium officials wanted to reopen the place quickly. So even before the $616,000 commitment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency came through, they sent a team on an expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, the Florida Keys and Bahamas, where they caught 1,681 fish for $99,766.

Despite the clear savings, the dispute has dragged on for 17 months.

"FEMA does not consider it reasonable when an applicant takes excursions to collect specimens," FEMA quality control manager Barb Schweda wrote in a 2006 e-mail. "They must be obtained through a reputable sources where, again, the item is commercially available."

FEMA's refusal to reimburse the aquarium is grounded in the Stafford Act, the federal law governing disaster aid that has been criticized as inadequate for Katrina recovery. The Stafford Act says facilities can only be returned to their pre-disaster condition, not improved. Under those rules, the aquarium would have to buy fish of the approximate age and size of the lost specimens.

State experts and others counter that acquiring thousands of duplicates in the marketplace is nearly impossible, and a waste of public money.

"You can go out in the commercial market and buy a clownfish. You can also go out and capture it. And if you're capturing fish to fill an aquarium, it is much more cost-effective. Talk about being good stewards of the taxpayer dollar," said Rick Patterson, a specialist with James Lee Witt Associates, a firm that mediates Louisiana's disputes with FEMA. The firm is led by Witt, FEMA director during the Clinton administration.

Mark Smith, a spokesman with the Gov.'s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, complained that all too often, FEMA does not reward innovation or cost-saving ways to rebuild.

"It's relatively typical that when Louisiana, or an applicant, finds a unique way to solve a problem that FEMA comes in and throws a flag and says, `No, you can't do that,'" Smith said.

Local officials have complained that FEMA has applied the rules with maddening literal-mindedness, insisting on itemizing smashed buildings down to every last light fixture, doorknob and hinge when awarding rebuilding aid.

Bob Josephson, FEMA's director of external affairs in Louisiana, was alerted to the case by The Associated Press and reviewed it recently. He suggested FEMA may have made a mistake, but did not promise quick resolution.

"There are approximately 35,000 projects in the system and although we work very hard to ensure we get them right the first time around, undoubtedly, some will be misjudged," he said.

About a dozen aquarium staffers went fishing, snorkeling and scuba diving between January and May 2006, catching tiny highhat fish, yellowtail snapper, jackfish and others. The staffers worked 12-hour days but put in for only eight hours a day, according to invoices.

The catch was placed in a 1,000-gallon tank fitted to a flatbed trailer for the trip to New Orleans. TV crews and a local newspaper reporter tagged along on some trips but paid their own bills.

Most of the fish were caught in Florida waters for one-fifth the price charged by online vendors and specialty stores — suppliers FEMA recommended using.

"That is exactly the most prudent way to do it," Steve Feldman, spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, said of the fishing trip.

The aquarium also received donations from other institutions, including stingrays from Sea World in Orlando, Fla.

With the aquarium's 900,000 annual visitors a linchpin of the city's tourism-dependent economy, the state asked FEMA in May 2006 for rebuilding help for the private institution even though the fish had already been caught. It is not unusual for the state to ask for assistance after a project has been completed.

The fish were put on display in mid-2006 and have proved to be healthy. But the aquarium had to lay off 80 percent of its workers after Katrina and attendance is only 70 percent of what it was before the storm, spokeswoman Melissa Lee said.

"When those numbers drop, the revenue drops," she said. "That's money that could go to feeding animals and increasing staff. That's money we need back from FEMA."

The firm mediating the dispute has pressed on with its effort to secure FEMA help, arguing that salmon hatcheries in Oregon and lab rats in Texas were replaced with FEMA money after disasters hit there in 1994 and 2001.

The New Orleans case has been appealed to FEMA offices in Texas and Washington. The dispute could wind up in federal court.


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Engineers cut from storm suits

• Firm that helped State Farm with claims reaches settlement

By Michael Kunzelman
The Associated Press
November 14, 2007

NEW ORLEANS — An engineering firm has reached a settlement with attorneys who have filed hundreds of lawsuits against State Farm Insurance Cos. on behalf of policyholders whose claims were denied by the insurer after Hurricane Katrina.

Under terms of the settlement, Forensic Analysis and Engineering Corp., which helped State Farm adjust policyholder claims in Mississippi, would be dropped from a federal lawsuit that accuses the insurer of engaging in a "pattern of racketeering" after the storm.

Forensic would be dismissed from several of those suits, including one filed in June that accuses Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm of violating the civil Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO, in its handling of claims after the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

Zach Scruggs, one of the attorneys who filed the RICO case against Forensic, State Farm and engineering firm E.A. Renfroe & Company Inc., said the settlement will "better enable us to prosecute our cases against State Farm." Scruggs said he couldn't elaborate, however, because the terms of the deal are confidential.


In a related development this past week, a federal magistrate in Gulfport agreed to lift a court order that had barred Scruggs from providing a federal grand jury with a Forensic employee's computer hard drive.

U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton, whose jurisdiction includes Mississippi's Gulf Coast, served Scruggs with a subpoena for the hard drive. Lampton has convened a grand jury that is believed to be investigating the insurance industry's handling of claims after Katrina.

Forensic had persuaded U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Walker to block Scruggs from complying with the subpoena. Now that Walker has lifted the order, Scruggs said his firm is "making arrangements" to turn over the hard drive it obtained from Forensic employee Nellie Williams in July.

An attorney for Raleigh, N.C.-based Forensic and a State Farm spokesman said they couldn't immediately comment on Forensic's settlement.

Scruggs and other policyholders' attorneys have accused State Farm of pressuring its engineers into altering their conclusions in reports on storm-damaged homes so claims could be denied. To support that claim, Scruggs' firm cited a series of e-mails exchanged by Forensic officials in October 2005.

In one e-mail, Forensic President and CEO Robert Kochan describes complaints about the firm's work made by Alexis King, a State Farm manager in Mississippi. Randy Down, who was the firm's vice president of engineering services, responded, "I really question the ethics of someone who wants to fire us simply because our conclusions don't match hers."

Forensic also is named as a defendant in a separate lawsuit the Scruggs Katrina Group's attorneys filed against several insurance companies, accusing them of overbilling the federal government for flood damage from Katrina.

The U.S. Department of Justice has until Jan. 31 to decide whether to intervene in that suit. In the meantime, Scruggs said his firm doesn't have the authority to dismiss Forensic from the case.

"That's kind of in a holding pattern now," he said.




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Renters struggle for assistance

Rigid rules abandon needy families


By ANITA LEE
calee@sunherald.com

D'IBERVILLE --Before Hurricane Katrina, Susan Anderson and her 10-year-old son, Tyler, evacuated from Arbor View Apartment Homes with their most treasured possessions, including photographs of Tyler from infancy to boyhood.

Those possessions are stacked in a dozen boxes against freshly painted blank walls at Arbor View.

"I'm not comfortable enough to put a nail in a wall and hang something up," Susan Anderson said recently. "It will hurt so much if I have to take it down."

The Andersons are among those who struggled to make ends meet before Hurricane Katrina and now find themselves one step from homelessness despite more than $3.2 billion in government and charity assistance for Mississippians hit by Katrina.

Their story illustrates how survivors can be mistreated and mismanaged when their needs fail to dovetail with recovery's rigid rules. It also raises questions about how smooth the transition will be for more than 10,000 households still in FEMA trailers, as Anderson and Tyler were until their apartment was renovated.

More than 50 percent of those households rented before the hurricane. The Andersons were among the vast majority - 99.4 percent - who managed without public housing assistance, according to FEMA.

Anderson dissolves into tears when she describes the way FEMA has treated her.

She said, "I think their job is to demean you, insult you and accuse you of trying to rip them off."

FEMA refused to discuss her case for privacy reasons but said it is under review.

Anderson has received about $15,000 in FEMA assistance but no money to help with rent despite the fact that individuals are eligible for up to $26,200. Relief organizations have also been unable to assist, although Mercy Housing and Human Development agreed Friday to take on the case because 49-year-old Anderson is disabled.

FEMA eventually put them up at a Holiday Inn in Orange Beach, Ala. The Andersons spent their $2,000 in emergency funds on transportation, laundry, food and cell phone minutes.

The FEMA workers kept telling Anderson to find an apartment. But she saw no sense in searching for a rental in a small resort community where she had no support system and no transportation.

Tyler, desperate to return home, finally told her, "Just get a car, Momma, and we can drive it as close as we can to home and sleep in it until they have something ready for us."

The stress was getting to Tyler. He finally had to confess to his overburdened mother that he was having problems. His health insurance, through the state of Mississippi, covered his medical costs. He needed testing and treatment.

Anderson rented a car, hoping a personal visit to the FEMA disaster relief center would help them secure a trailer in D'Iberville.

On their second trip to the Mississippi Coast in a rental car, the Andersons were once again informed by FEMA that there was no trailer for them in D'Iberville. But they had seen vacant spots at one of the parks there.

Susan Anderson pitched a fit. The relief worker got on the telephone. Within 30 minutes, they were handed the keys to a FEMA trailer in D'Iberville.

They moved in after Christmas 2005. Tyler returned to D'Iberville Elementary School, where he was a fourth-grader. In February, Laura Bush visited. She wanted to know what made the children feel safe. Tyler drew a picture of the Holiday Inn employees in front of the hotel. They had surprised his mom and him at Christmas with a tree and gifts. He got a new bicycle and a PlayStation 2.

That night on television, Laura Bush mentioned his drawing and talked about how important it was for children to feel safe. Susan Anderson could tell from the look on her son's face how happy he was that someone - the first lady, no less - had cared enough to listen.

How to help

If you would like to help Susan Anderson and her 10-year-old son, Tyler, call Mercy Housing and Human Development, Monday through Friday, at 896-1945.


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Accused firm could settle in Scruggs case

By ANITA LEE

GULFPORT -- Forensic notice of settlement

The Scruggs Katrina Group has settled its differences with an engineering firm accused of criminal activity in handling of Hurricane Katrina claims, according to a notice filed in U.S. District Court.

If the settlement is finalized, Forensic Analysis & Engineering Corp. will be dismissed as a defendant in a racketeering lawsuit the Scruggs group filed on behalf of 21 policyholders from Pascagoula to Waveland.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The lawsuit alleges State Farm insurance companies conspired with vendors to minimize or deny policyholder claims by blaming Katrina damage on tidal surge covered by federal flood insurance rather than the wind damage State Farm covers.


State Farm and the vendors, including Forensic and independent adjusting firm E.A. Renfroe & Co., have denied the allegations.

Forensic also is under federal scrutiny. In a policyholder lawsuit filed by the Scruggs group, Forensic was forced to turn over the personal computer hard drive of employee Nellie Williams, who exchanged e-mails with company engineers assigned to State Farm claims.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Jackson subpoenaed the computer hard drive from the Scruggs group, asking that it be delivered to a grand jury in Gulfport. Forensic at first fought the subpoena, which the Scruggs group wanted to give federal prosecutors. The two sides settled their disagreement over the hard drive on Nov. 9, the same day Forensic entered a notice that a settlement was at hand in the racketeering case.

Forensic e-mails previously obtained by the Scruggs group for the racketeering case show State Farm manager Alexis "Lecky" King was unhappy when engineers concluded wind had damaged property, insisting water was the cause. King at first "fired" Forensic, the e-mails indicated, but decided to give the company another chance if two contested reports were reworked.

King has been identified as a "target" of the federal investigation, but her attorney says she has done nothing wrong. In cases where she has been forced to offer pretrial testimony, King has refused to answer many questions, invoking her Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

State Farm maintains it was simply seeking "dependable, accurate engineering reports."

Forensic attorney Larry Canada of New Orleans could not be reached to comment.

The racketeering lawsuit filed by the Scruggs group on behalf of policyholders has been assigned to Judge William H. Barbour Jr. in Jackson and has tentatively been set for trial Oct. 20, 2008.

• Federal subpoena for Forensic hard drive

• Forensic, Scruggs joint motion regarding subpoenaed records


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Mother, son struggling to keep roof over heads

Posted on Tue, Nov. 13, 2007
By ANITA LEE
calee@sunherald.com

D'IBERVILLE -- Susan Anderson watched her recovery money dwindle as she tried to keep herself and her son, Tyler, afloat after Hurricane Katrina.

In early 2006, they finally secured a temporary home in a FEMA trailer off Lamey Bridge Road, a few miles from the D'Iberville apartment complex where they had lived before the storm.

Anderson worked the phones, trying to find help. She desperately needed a car. Her son had taken ill after the hurricane and had weekly appointments with two different doctors. A cab ride to one of those appointments was $38.

A FEMA counselor referred Anderson to the Harrison County Long Term Recovery Coalition, whose flier said the agency helped with unmet needs such as housing and vehicles.

She filled out an application with the Harrison County group, but did not hear back. As 2006 wore on, Anderson was running out of options. FEMA had given her $9,000 for furniture, but she and Tyler didn't need furniture for the trailer. FEMA could not give her money for a car because the two she lost in Katrina had been in family members' names.

She finally decided to use the FEMA money as a downpayment on a car. She bought a new Toyota Corolla because she feared a used car might be a flooded Katrina wreck. Her decision to buy a car with the furniture money was a no-no. From that point, relief workers began speaking to her as if she were a thief.

"Why can a mother not get her child medical treatment?" Anderson said recently. "What was I supposed to do? Flap my arms, turn into a bird and fly him to his medical appointments?"

What the various relief workers failed to understand was that Anderson and her son had not been sitting in their trailer, piling up relief loot. They had lost their food stamps because they had a FEMA trailer. Their transportation expenses had skyrocketed. Laundromat washers and dryers ate lots of quarters.

Anderson documented her expenses, including the weekly doctor's appointments.

By March of 2007, apartments had been restored at Arbor View, where the Andersons lived before the storm. She and Tyler moved home, away from the FEMA park where drug addicts loitered and strangers bunked with the neighbors.

Anderson's rent is slightly higher and the apartment smaller than before the storm, but the complex is kid-friendly, secure and well maintained. Anderson has received no FEMA assistance for the move or the rent. FEMA caps individual assistance at $26,200, but Anderson said she has received only about $15,000.

The Salvation Army gave the Andersons vouchers for two mattresses and box springs. Anderson called the Harrison County Long Term Recovery again to see why no caseworker had been in touch and if they could help with furniture. The woman who answered said Anderson could be prosecuted for duplication of benefits.

"She told me I should have saved my FEMA money for furniture," Anderson said.

FEMA refused to acknowledge that her benefits would not be duplicated if an agency helped her. Anderson decided to visit the FEMA office in Biloxi.

"Security is everywhere," Anderson said. "It's locked up tighter than Fort Knox." She said a fellow named Buddy was sent up front to talk to her. Buddy told her to copy her records and resubmit them, including all her rental car receipts. They were duly submitted, but her request for further assistance was denied.

She said Buddy told her: "As far as I can see, you're doing pretty good. You've got a brand new car, you've got a new apartment. It's the end of the line for you, lady."

On Aug. 16, Anderson penned a letter to U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. The letter was 10 pages organized as 17 points. The 11th point: "We have fallen so far behind on just the most basic living expenses, we are going to lose everything."

Point 15, in part: "I have not gotten rich from this situation. We have had to seek assistance for food and to pay electricity over the past several months. I sold my jewelry. It wasn't worth much but had sentimental value to me (I salvaged it from mud and water after Katrina). My son has even sold his video games.

"I've heard words like 'donor intent' from charitable groups. I don't think donors would mind if their donations went toward helping a mother get her child to his doctor. As far as FEMA is concerned, I don't understand why they seem to be enjoying the fact that I will lose everything again. It seems like such a waste of taxpayer dollars because a lot has been spent on housing for us up to this point."

Anderson has received no response.

As for FEMA, the agency could not discuss Anderson's case because of privacy issues. Instead, FEMA released this statement: "Her case is still under review. The review process is still continuing."

Anderson doubts she and Tyler could find a cheaper place to live. Their rent at Arbor View is $835 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.

"I'm not saying I can't pay rent," Anderson said. "Right now, I'm just saying there's not a lot to choose from. I'll never have any money for furniture now."

Besides the beds, they have a couch and love seat loaned to them by a woman from one of the churches. Anderson also bought a washer and dryer. They have no tables. Tyler points to a plastic storage box when asked where he eats.

Still, he is thriving in school and happy to be home. Best of all, he has completed his medical treatments and feels much better, although he is still very anxious.

"I worry that we're not going to be able to live here," said Tyler, who has bright blue eyes. "I want to live here more than anything."

How to help

If you would like to help Susan Anderson and her son, call Mercy Housing and Human Development at 896-1945.


© 2007 Sun Herald. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.sunherald.com

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