[StBernard] Road Home program should work to pick up payout pace

[Westley Annis]

by Terry O'Connor 
09/11/2006 	
 	
Since gaining full funding in July, The Road Home program has barely
dribbled $1 million of $10.4 billion in allocations out to deserving home,
apartment and infrastructure owners. At this rate, the Road Home funds will
be gone in roughly 100 years. 
 
OK, unfair math this early in the game. Bureaucracies take time to set up. 
  
That's the problem. Red tape-wielding bureaucrats sometimes believe it's
more important to hold up progress than risk making a mistake. Our citizens
deserve a speedier response than they've received. 
  
Nothing can be done about the year-plus it has taken to reach this point. 
  
There's no point in comparing Mississippi's progress with ours because our
neighbors have had plenty of problems with recovery funding, too, and their
disaster is fundamentally different than ours. 
  
Besides, Mississippi had a two-month head start when considering how long it
took for New Orleans to dry out from the failed levees. 
  
So, let's look forward. And move smartly. 
The funding is in place. The Road Home program appears fully functional
after a pilot program lauded by the 42 Baton Rouge families fortunate enough
to take part. Why Baton Rouge families were chosen is a mystery but it
doesn't matter. We're looking forward. 
It's time to start dealing. We've got more than 100,000 applicants for Road
Home funding who all deserve faster service than they've received to date. 
  
These people have lived for more than a year in Federal Emergency Management
Agency trailers and strange homes, on spare beds and couches, with
relatives, friends and even ex-spouses. They've suffered enough already. 
  
What the Louisiana Recovery Authority does in the next 30 days will show
whether it will continue to proceed at a snail's pace in handing out money.
Belief in state leadership will either be enhanced as The Road Home
encourages the recovery or the exact opposite will happen. 
  
The ICF International, the company administering the Road Home Program,
projects it will take five to seven months to handle every applicant, which
means some homeowners won't be compensated until March 2007. That's too
slow. 
  
It does take time to dole out billions in recovery assistance while guarding
zealously against fraud. But Louisiana funding is being deposited into bank
accounts for approved repairs or rebuilding projects. Even after requiring
applicants to register twice and asking for far more information than
necessary, the LRA should be able to move this money twice as fast as that.
Adding seven months onto the wait homeowners have endured so far is a slap
in the face to the honest, hardworking citizens of this state who deserve
better. 
  
Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said the state has turned the corner in its
recovery efforts. If true, most devastated New Orleans homeowners would say
we haven't gone far down the block. 
  
A show of urgency in dispensing the funding to devastated homeowners would
go a long way toward helping them decide to stay. 
 
That is what we want, right?