LAKE CHARLES, La. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has stopped providing two-thousand dollar checks to Hurricane Rita victims, triggering angry reactions from elected officials and residents who said the assistance was promised by President Bush.
The checks -- part of a program called "expedited assistance" -- were discontinued because they was designed as emergency payments to help victims immediately after the September 24th storm.
Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen wrote in a letter to Calcasieu Parish Police Jury president Hal McMillin that he would make sure people who qualified would get the money.
McMillin says about ten thousand people in his parish alone qualified for the checks but have been rejected for various reasons.
U-S Representative Charles Boustany sent a letter today to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA, asking that the check program start up again.
Parish officials say they were repeatedly told by FEMA that every household within the mandatory evacuation area qualified for the assistance. But, now they say the agency has been imposing additional eligibility requirements for the checks -- despite initial promises to the contrary.
http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=4075714&nav=EyB0
"Parish officials say "
Unless it is in writing, no way I trust LA officials about what they say they were told.
When this is all over, FEMA will be forced to have two sets of rules, those for states with Governors that can walk and chew gum at the same time and those for idiots as Governors (read Louisiana)
Blando: "But we have Softball fields to build and museum parking lots to pave!!!"
If only those who actually qualified had received the payments, there should have been enough for everyone. But, as usual, the freeloaders and thieves got to the government trough first, and there isn't enough slop to go around. The feds should have the moxie to say to those whiners in LA that there will be no more money spent in that state until a payment schedule is in place for their share of the cleanup...3.7 BILLION dollars. It's not the nation's fault they were too incompetent to mind the levees and keep the pump operators on the job, so that 90% of the damage was self-inflicted incompetence.