From Deseret News archives:
Delegation promises Katrina aid
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn noted a House bill that would provide millions of dollars for affordable housing on the coast nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina. He also said the Democrat-led Congress would support removing the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security.
Clyburn, D-S.C., spoke at DeLisle Elementary School after hearing Mississippi coast teachers and public school administrators complain about FEMA.
He is part of a 13-member congressional delegation led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a two-day tour of areas still struggling to recover from Katrina. They are looking to tout progress made and determine where more federal help is needed.
Congress has provided more than $116 billion in various forms of aid to the Gulf Coast since Katrina, but much of it hasn't been spent, and the money that has been distributed was largely for short-term and emergency needs.
At DeLisle Elementary — a campus that was combined after Katrina to include both elementary and middle-school students — members of Congress sat at cafeteria tables Monday and watched slide shows with photos of the area before and after Katrina blew ashore on Aug. 29, 2005.
Superintendent Sue Matheson said her district was still seeking federal money for an additional water well for a school that reopened shortly after Katrina. She said FEMA still has not approved the project.
"With FEMA, we have a difficult time getting anyone to make a decision," Matheson told The Associated Press.
Kim Stasny, superintendent of Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District, said her district is still awaiting FEMA's approval for millions of dollars in repairs to schools.
"The second-guessing is really throwing us a curve ball," Stasny said. "There are (classroom) trailers that are deteriorating as we speak."
The delegation later told a crowd of about 500 in Bay St. Louis that a vote could come in September on a bill aimed at improving the insurance problems that Gulf Coast homeowners have experienced since Katrina.
Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, has proposed adding wind coverage to the National Flood Insurance Program, which was created in 1968 to help homeowners living in flood-prone areas get flood insurance to complement private policies. Taylor said he did not know the cost of providing wind coverage.
Insurance companies have stopped writing new policies on the Gulf Coast, and those who do have insurance are paying premiums that have skyrocketed since Katrina.
