Friday, March 06, 2009

Rebuilding Mississippi’s Gulf Coast: Mississippi’s Responsibility

Steps Coalition urges Governor to “Step it Up a Notch”

Biloxi - In a speech on Wednesday, Gov. Haley Barbour told community leaders to “step it up a notch” and spend the remaining $2.1 billion in federal aid given to the state after Hurricane Katrina or he will take it back. Those powerful words cut deep in a region still struggling to recover over three and a half years after the storm.

March 6, 2009—FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Rebuilding Mississippi’s Gulf Coast: Mississippi’s Responsibility
Steps Coalition urges Governor to “Step it Up a Notch”

Biloxi - In a speech on Wednesday, Gov. Haley Barbour told community leaders to “step it up a notch” and spend the remaining $2.1 billion in federal aid given to the state after Hurricane Katrina or he will take it back. Those powerful words cut deep in a region still struggling to recover over three and a half years after the storm.

As a group of nearly 40 organizations devoted to rebuilding the region, the STEPS Coalition is in significant agreement with the Governor on these points:

 It has taken too long to dispense the $2.8 billion in federal aid the state received.
 Those dollars should be spent as soon as possible.
 There is a significant amount of housing rebuilt since Katrina that does not match
the needs of those who live in the region.
 More people are still struggling to rebuild from the storm’s devastation.

Unfortunately, the responsibility does not lay entirely with regional leaders. The Governor needs to “step it up a notch,” as he says, if we are going to truly “finish the job” of recovery.

Steps applauds Governor Barbour’s plan to request an additional 5,000 Section 8 vouchers, but this will not resolve the housing needs on the coast.

“There is still too much left undone to threaten taking away crucial funds that have been allocated for Gulf Coast recovery,” said James Crowell, President of the Board of Directors for the Steps Coalition. “That money was not meant for infrastructure projects a hundred miles away from the coast. It was meant to rebuild this region that is so vital to the entire state.”

Governor Barbour’s tactic to chide and threaten local governments appears to be the latest round in the uneven recovery “blame game” that has found his administration pointing the finger everywhere but internally. The Governor alone has complete control over the release of the federal funds the state received after Katrina, and he alone bears responsibility for his own mistakes and delays. Failing to execute rental recovery programs as quickly as homeowner grant programs was his mistake. Waiting almost two years to commence a small rental program was his mistake. The lag in affordable rental reconstruction originates with Governor Barbour himself, not with local government delays in seeking FEMA funds to rebuild their public structures.

Governor Barbour’s discriminatory and delayed programs left out the very people the Governor is now trying to house. Many had to fend for themselves when the Governor mandated that recovery dollars would not go to those who suffered wind damage, a preposterous proposal after a hurricane.

If the Governor is truly committed to helping the region recover, he will work with local elected officials, business, and community leaders to do the following:

 Set aside funds to enable long term recovery organizations to pay for repairs for their backlog of households in need.
 Augment financing for at-risk subsidized apartment complex developers.
 Increase the size and grant amount of the small rental program.

The Governor is right; it is high time for him to finish the job.
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