N.Y. Times on HUD mandated changes to Road Home

First the national politicians don't want to give money for recovery because of Louisiana's "reputation for corruption." So we create a program with multiple safeguards against fraud. Now HUD wants us to make things easier for recipients by giving lump-sum payments. So the prospect of corruption and fraud emerges again. We just can't win.

Louisiana homeowners may get faster access to rebuilding grants after a federal decision late last month that is forcing the state to change its slow-moving $7.5-billion “Road Home” program to repair houses damaged or destroyed by hurricanes in 2005.

But the changes, which should be detailed next week, have raised concerns that some homeowners will not use their grants of up to $150,000 for repairs or could lose them to fraud or debt, potentially leading to increased blight in hard-hit areas.

HUD gave the coup de grace to Blanco.

The Governor had been in serious trouble for months, mostly because of the slow response of the Road Home program. Money was snagged for months by ICFI (run by former FEMA and Homeland Security officials) At the point when it seemed that money might be starting to flow for the recovery, HUD refused to approve the safeguards the state had built into the program to assure that the money would be spent on recovery, and not on anything else (Remember those $2000 credit cards the feds gave out after Katrina--- used for strippers and beer in some cases. The state required escrow accounts for the Road Home money to prevent those abuses.)

But the final straw came Friday, when federal Housing and Urban Development officials criticized the way the state was distributing aid through installments from escrow accounts and urged the state to begin making lump-sum payments to homeowners who have applied for assistance from the Road Home program.

HUD claimed that it had not known about the requirements until now. Yeah, right, then how come I and everyone else in Louisiana has known about them for more than a year? Was there politics involved in the timing of this? Ya think? Maybe someone at HUD thought this might somehow benefit the Administration? Ya think? Does this maybe validate Blanco's charge that the Bush administration has been playing politics with the recovery effort? Ya think?

So maybe the BIG jump in ICFI's stock market price came as stockholders realized that ICFI was in for some big rewards for defeating Blanco in the form of fat new contracts from the Feds. Ya think?