Houston-Galveston Officials Say Proposed Recovery Plan Is Unfair

Officials from the Houston-Galveston area have said that a state proposal that would reduce the share of federal disaster recovery funds that the region would receive is unfair.

Hurricane Ike devastated the Galveston area last Sept. 13.

City Manager Steve LeBlanc said during a recent public hearing that it makes no sense that the disaster recovery money would be spread to communities that didn’t receive as much damage as Galveston.

“It makes sense that you would use no other funding method than that which will help people most,” he said.

The Galveston County Daily News reported that during an initial round of funding, the Houston-Galveston Area Council was awarded 62 percent of the money.

But under a proposal by the Texas Office of Rural and Community Affairs, which is in charge of handing out $1.7 billion in federal funding, the council would receive 36 percent.

Earlier this year, Texas officials used damage assessments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine which communities could get more funding. But after complaints that the assessments were inaccurate, state officials decided to create a model that would use weather data to show which areas had received the most damage.

However, figuring allocations in that way leaves out the human element, said Sterling Patrick, the director of Galveston’s Grants and Housing Department.

Sixty-one percent of houses on the island weren’t covered by flood insurance when Hurricane Ike slammed ashore last year, and 23 percent of island residents live below the poverty line, Patrick said. Without federal disaster recovery funds, they will not be able to repair their houses, he said.

During the public hearing, area officials also protested the state’s decision not to allow county governments to distribute their share of funding to cities within their boundaries, as they did in the earlier round of funding.

Even with the allocation change, the Houston-Galveston Area Council would still receive the most funds of any region affected by hurricanes Ike and Dolly.

The state must submit its funding plan to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by Sept. 30. Comments about the plan must be submitted in writing to the agency by Sept. 14.

Information from: The Galveston County Daily News, www.galvnews.com