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01/31/07 |
Today on page 4A of our paper...
Contractor takes the heat for slow pace of post-Katrina program in Louisiana
MELINDA DESLATTE
Associated Press Writer
BATON ROUGE, La. — Nearly eight months after it was hired by the state, a consulting company in charge of dispensing billions in federal aid to people whose homes were damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has received 103,000 applications but handed out fewer than 400 grants (the print edition stated "fewer than 300 grants").
And now the company is getting much of the blame for the overall slow recovery of New Orleans and the rest of the Louisiana Gulf Coast.
Frustrated homeowners are bitterly criticizing Fairfax, Va.-based ICF International Inc., and state lawmakers are demanding Gov. Kathleen Blanco fire the company. But ICF is defending its handling of the aid program, saying it is a task of unprecedented proportions.
ICF was awarded a contract valued at up to $756 million in June to run the Road Home program, a $7.5 billion federally funded, state-administered program to compensate property owners whose houses were damaged or destroyed by the 2005 hurricanes. For ICF, the contract amounts to a potential 10 percent commission.
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Congressional Black Caucus Wants Katrina Committee
WASHINGTON -- The Congressional Black Caucus has asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to form a new committee on Hurricane Katrina to focus more urgently on rebuilding the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans.
"The Bush administration has turned its back on our fellow Americans, the victims of the greatest disaster on American soil in our generation," CBC Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., wrote in a letter to Pelosi. "How can we talk about reconstruction abroad when we cannot help our fellow Americans at home?"
Kilpatrick blasted President Bush for not mentioning Katrina in his State of the Union address last week and said forming a select House committee on the issue "offers the best hope for development."
A Pelosi spokesman, Drew Hammill, said Tuesday he had not seen the letter but that the office would look closely at the request.
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I and others have contended that Nagin and Blanco had more than their share of the blame for the disastrous handling of Katrina, and now we see a company hired by the state has only made grants on less than half a percent of the applications they've received.
And yet, we also learn again that it's Bush that has bungled the whole thing.
God sends a hurricane, people die - Bush's fault.
Nagin doesn't use school buses, people die - Bush's fault.
Blanco doesn't get her National Guard in place, people die - Bush's fault.
Blanco hires consulting firm to hand out grants, people still homeless - Bush's fault.
Idiots in New Orleans re-elect Nagin, murder rate rises, people homeless, others don't care to return, Saints lose NFC championship - Bush's fault.
That Bush sure has screwed everything up. |
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