    [House Hearing, 110 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

      LEGISLATIVE FIXES FOR LINGERING PROBLEMS THAT HINDER KATRINA RECOVERY

    =======================================================================

                                    (110-43)

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                                SUBCOMMITTEE ON
        ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

                                     OF THE

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                       TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                  MAY 10, 2007

                                   __________

                           Printed for the use of the
                 Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

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                 COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

                     JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman

    NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia    JOHN L. MICA, Florida
    PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon             DON YOUNG, Alaska
    JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois          THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
    ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of   HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
    Columbia                             JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
    JERROLD NADLER, New York             WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland
    CORRINE BROWN, Florida               VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
    BOB FILNER, California               STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio
    EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas         RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana
    GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi             FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
    ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland         JERRY MORAN, Kansas
    ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California        GARY G. MILLER, California
    LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa             ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
    TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania             HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
    BRIAN BAIRD, Washington              Carolina
    RICK LARSEN, Washington              TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
    MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts    TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
    JULIA CARSON, Indiana                SAM GRAVES, Missouri
    TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York          BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
    MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine            JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
    BRIAN HIGGINS, New York              SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
    RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri              Virginia
    JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado            JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
    GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California      MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
    DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois            CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
    DORIS O. MATSUI, California          TED POE, Texas
    NICK LAMPSON, Texas                  DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington
    ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio               CONNIE MACK, Florida
    MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
    BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa                York
    JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania          LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
    TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota           CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr.,
    HEATH SHULER, North Carolina         Louisiana
    MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York           JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
    HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona           CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
    CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania  THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia
    JOHN J. HALL, New York               MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
    STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin               VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
    JERRY McNERNEY, California
    VACANCY

                                      (ii)

     Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency
                                   Management

            ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman

    MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine            SAM GRAVES, Missouri
    JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania          BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
    MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York          SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
    CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania  Virginia
    TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota           CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New
    JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota         York
      (Ex Officio)                       JOHN L. MICA, Florida
                                           (Ex Officio)

                                     (iii)

                                    CONTENTS

                                                                       Page

    Summary of Subject Matter........................................    vi

                                   TESTIMONY

    Baker, Hon. Richard, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Louisiana...................................................    15
    Boustany, Jr., Hon. Charles, a Representative in Congress from
      the State of Louisiana.........................................    17
    Brown, Hon. Corrine, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Florida.....................................................    27
    Jefferson, Hon. William, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of Louisiana.............................................    19
    Jindal, Hon. Bobby, a Representative in Congress from the State
      of Louisiana...................................................    22
    Melancon, Hon. Charlie, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of Louisiana.............................................    24
    Pickering, Hon. Charles, a Representative in Congress from the
      State of Mississippi...........................................     6
    Taylor, Hon. Gene, a Representative in Congress from the State of
      Mississippi....................................................     3

              PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS

    Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania.............................    39
    Baker, Hon. Richard H., of Louisiana.............................    40
    Boustany, Jr., Hon. Charles, of Louisiana........................    48
    Jefferson, Hon. William, of Louisiana............................    54
    Melancon, Hon. Charlie, of Louisiana.............................    58
    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5925.001

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5925.002

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5925.003

     LEGISLATIVE FIXES FOR LINGERING PROBLEMS THAT HINDER KATRINA RECOVERY

                                  ----------

                             Thursday, May 10, 2007

                      House of Representatives,
        Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
    Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and
                                          Emergency Management,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in
    Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eleanor Holmes
    Norton [chairman of the subcommittee] Presiding.
        Ms. Norton. I want to welcome members who will be
    testifying at today's hearing, which will address issues still
    outstanding 20 months after Hurricane Katrina made its
    devastating landfall. We will hear from members of the gulf
    coast region, who describe issues that still prevent full
    recovery from this disaster in their communities. This hearing
    continues an aggressive oversight and legislative agenda on the
    subcommittee of FEMA matters.
        This is our subcommittee's fifth hearing on FEMA issues
    this year. Perhaps most significantly, we moved the most
    important legislation requested by gulf State officials.
    Working with the Democratic leadership, we quickly passed out
    of committee H.R. 1144, the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Federal
    Match Relief Act of 2007 to provide urgently needed relief from
    several matching requirements for communities devastated by
    hurricanes Katrina Rita and Wilma.
        An amended form of legislation is included in the emergency
    supplemental appropriation that passed the House and Senate and
    was sent to the President. We also collaborated with the
    Committee on Financial Services on H.R. 1227, the Gulf Coast
    Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007 to ensure Louisiana's
    ability to use its hazard mitigation program funds for its road
    home program.
        These protections were included in the legislation that
    passed the House in March. Hurricane Katrina made landfall on
    August 29, 2005 and had a massive physical impact affecting
    90,000 square miles--an area the size of Great Britain. More
    than 80 percent of the City of New Orleans flooded an area
    seven times the size of Manhattan. Under the authority granted
    the President in the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency
    Assistance Act, the President declared a major disaster in the
    States of Mississippi and Louisiana on that date.
        The Stafford Act authorizes the disaster assistance that
    FEMA provides after a major disaster. While the authority of
    the Stafford Act is very broad and flexible, it does not
    anticipate every circumstance that can arise in a disaster,
    particularly a catastrophic disaster of the unprecedented size
    and cost of Hurricane Katrina.
        Historically when catastrophic or unusual disasters struck,
    FEMA and Congress worked cooperatively to identify areas where
    FEMA needed special authority or direction. However, when
    Katrina struck, FEMA was not a flexible or independent
    government agency, but an organization within the Department of
    Homeland Security, a larger bureaucracy, without direct access
    to the President or Congress.
        I believe that this structure was a factor in preventing
    FEMA from engaging with Congress as they have in the past. The
    problem was further magnified by the unprecedented scope and
    magnitude of Katrina. As a result, Congress must act to fill
    holes that are withholding recovery on the gulf coast.
        Today, I expect we will hear some matters that are normally
    not covered by the Stafford Act and probably for good reason,
    as the Stafford Act is only supposed to supplemental or replace
    what State and local governments do after a disaster. But the
    devastation of Katrina requires that we look at these issues
    differently and consider what may be needed to provide some
    further assistance for recovery from Katrina and Rita where
    appropriate, even if not warranted in other disasters.
        We very much look forward to hearing from the members this
    afternoon and I am pleased to ask Ranking Member Mr. Graves if
    he has any remarks at this time.
        Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Two months after
    Katrina made landfall in the gulf coast, this subcommittee
    recognized that the recovery in the region was already in a
    critical stage, and we held similar hearings at that time to
    discuss legislative proposals to spur on a successful recovery.
        Today we are meeting to hear legislative proposals to
    address lessons learned from the gulf coast recovery and other
    disasters that have happened since the fall of 2005. I look
    forward to the numerous proposals on issues ranging from
    everything from accountability to changes in the Stafford Act
    amendments and ensuring that the success and future recoveries
    at least goes a lot smoother.
        After a massive disaster like Hurricane Katrina, the sooner
    the community recovers, the less it is going to cost the
    taxpayers. In the long run, it is important to get businesses
    up and running and people back in their communities so the
    community can be once again self sufficient and productive. We
    need to ensure that communities have the tools for a quick and
    efficient recovery. And we should also be mindful that
    accountability is paramount to successful recovery of a region.
        In this effort, every dollar we lose to waste fraud and
    abuse is a dollar that is not spent helping the people of an
    impacted region.
        Additionally, there may be some projects where people have
    moved on and sought relief outside the regular process because
    the system wasn't working for them and they couldn't wait any
    longer for help. Although no longer pending, these cases also
    serve as examples where changes might prevent future problems
    that slow down the recovery process.
        Madam Chairwoman, I look forward to hearing the proposals
    from our colleagues today, and I thank you for this hearing.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Graves. We now will
    hear from the Mississippi panel. I would like to ask first, Mr.
    Taylor, who is a member of the committee, to testify and then
    Mr. Pickering, both of Mississippi.
        Mr. Taylor.

    STATEMENT OF THE HON. GENE TAYLOR, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
                     FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

        Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Ranking Member
    Graves, and I want to thank you and your staff for working with
    me, Brian Martin and other members of my staff to try to
    resolve some of the problems that have surfaced since the
    storm.
        Ms. Norton. Is your microphone on?
        Mr. Taylor. I believe it is. I will get a little closer.
    Again, I want to thank you and your staff for working with
    Brian Martin and my staff and other Members as we recognize
    problems trying to find legislative solutions to them.
        I want to thank you for conducting this hearing and
    agreeing to draft legislation to resolve the remaining problems
    with FEMA and the Stafford Act that hinder recovery after
    Hurricane Katrina. More than 20 months after the storm, there
    are obvious signs of recovery on the Mississippi gulf coast.
    But we still have a long way to go. Many of the homes that were
    damaged but not destroyed have been repaired.
        Those that have been completely rebuilt are coming along
    more slowly. And every week when I go home I see a few more
    houses going up. Next week, the Mississippi Department of
    Transportation will open two lanes of a new 2-mile bridge
    across San Luis Bay reconnecting the cities of Bay St. Louis
    and Pass Christian.
        Unfortunately, there is one gaping hole in the recovery of
    the south Mississippi. During the time that the Mississippi
    Department of Transportation and its contract to Granite Archer
    built a 2-mile long high rise bridge across this bay, not one
    significant city, county or school building has been rebuilt. A
    few public facilities have been reopened, but none of the major
    public buildings that were destroyed along the Mississippi gulf
    coast have been replaced. If you ask the mayors, the county
    supervisors, the school superintendents about the status of
    their projects, they will all give you the same answer, we are
    still in the negotiations with FEMA.
        At this rate, the schools and local governmental buildings
    will be the last things built in Mississippi. When I see a new
    construction project anywhere on the Mississippi gulf coast, it
    is a safe bet it is not a public assistance project involving
    FEMA. We are finishing our second school year with many of
    these young people going to school in temporary classrooms. The
    Hancock County emergency 9/11 system is still operating out of
    a trailer. There are hundreds of project worksheets in
    Mississippi that are indefinitely delayed by never ending
    process of objections, revisions and disputes.
        FEMA is supposed to pay 90 percent of the cost to rebuild
    these facilities. But FEMA narrows the scope to exclude many
    costs that are necessary to comply with building codes and
    standards.
        My first and most urgent request is for Congress to mandate
    a fast track procedure and direct FEMA to get these public
    infrastructure projects approved, paid for and built. We need
    to require FEMA to apply common sense reasonableness tests to
    these projects that has been missing so far.
        I will give you a couple of examples from my home town of
    Bay St. Louis in the Waveland school district. At north Bay
    element school, FEMA says it will not pay any of the cost of
    relocating the temporary trailer classrooms to clear the site
    for a new school building.
        Also FEMA says the new building cannot be larger than the
    old building. But the classrooms from the old school were
    opened to outdoor walkways. That design does not meet today's
    safety requirements. The new building must have an interior
    hallway but that would add to the square footage of the
    building and FEMA won't approve it. At Waveland Elementary,
    FEMA has ruled that the center section is more than 50 percent
    damaged, but that the wings to the building are less than 50
    percent damaged. This means that the school district is
    required to rebuild the middle section 3 or 4 feet off the
    ground, but the wings that it touches will be left on the
    ground.
        There are two kinds of projects that are desperately need
    intervention to apply a common sense standards so that
    buildings can be rebuilt to current codes and standards. The
    current system has a strong bias towards rebuilding the same
    facility that was destroyed. In some cases, alternative
    projects would be reasonable or even desirable, but are
    discouraged because they will receive less money. Under current
    law, a local government loses 25 percent of its FEMA funds if
    it decides to bill a new structure rather than replacing a
    damaged one.
        Second Street Elementary in Bay St. Louis, built during the
    depression with WPA funds, is an old historic building that
    suffers storm damage. FEMA says it will cover new flooring, but
    not new electrical wiring. If the school district repairs the
    school to modern codes and standards, they will have to have 5
    to $7 million in cost that FEMA says it will not cover. The
    school district would rather consolidate the elementary school
    buildings by building additional classrooms at North Bay, but
    they would lose 25 percent of the FEMA funds for Second Street
    if they did so. FEMA should be encouraging cities and counties
    that lost buildings to consolidate projects. This is especially
    true in areas where FEMA is regarding the new construction to
    be built at higher elevations and stronger building codes.
        I recommend a change in the Stafford Act, so that there is
    no reduction in funding for alternative projects. FEMA should
    consider alternative projects on their merits rather than
    looking for loopholes to reject them. We have a chance to
    rebuild public facilities according to stronger building codes
    and disaster mitigation standards if FEMA would allow us to
    take advantage of this opportunity.
        My third request is for language to direct FEMA to apply a
    reasonableness standard to the dozens of disputed projects for
    reimbursement on debris removal. The main problem in many of
    these cases is that the local governments school districts and
    public utilities took decisive action in the immediate
    aftermath of the storm when FEMA was still nowhere to be found.
    After this fact, FEMA challenged their contracts for not
    complying with notice and bid rules.
        Madam Chairwoman, I realize I am over my time, so my
    question to you is would you prefer I submit the remainder of
    my statement for the record or--I probably got another 2
    minutes, so it is your call.
        Ms. Norton. Go right ahead.
        Mr. Taylor. Thank you.
        The Stafford Act allows emergency contracting procedures
    for 72 hours but then requires local governments to follow its
    bid requirements. The 72 hour requirement should have been
    waived a long time ago. In Hancock County, we had no
    communication, no electricity, no gasoline and certainly no
    leadership from FEMA for several weeks after the storm.
        All the public utilities did a phenomenal job and saved
    FEMA millions of dollars by making it possible for people to
    return to their homes. Elected cooperatives hired contractors
    to remove trees and other debris from their right of ways so
    the power crews could come behind and restore service.
        FEMA has denied reimbursement for some of these contracts.
    FEMA wants all the debris to be removal to be paid for by the
    cubic yard but the utilities paid their contractors by time and
    equipment. FEMA rules would have made the job more expensive
    and would have taken longer to restore utilities. I suggest
    language stating that FEMA can not disallow a contract by
    public utility during the emergency period simply for failing
    to comply with FEMA bid requirements.
        For public utilities the emergency period should be fine to
    extend until utility service has been restored to the service
    area. FEMA should then be reimbursed at a reasonable charges on
    time and equipment basis.
        School districts had a similar debris removal dispute. FEMA
    still has not fully reimbursed districts for debris removal
    because it did not follow FEMA rules.
        For example, FEMA said it would cut down the dead trees and
    limbs on school campuses but would not pay for grinding the
    stumps or cutting down the trees smaller than 2 inches in
    diameter. FEMA second guessing the local contracts is
    specifically outrageous because on their own contract, FEMA
    handed out billions of dollars in no-bid cost-plus contracts to
    Bechtel, Shaw, Fluor, CH2M Hill with almost no oversight. FEMA
    ignored the huge waste and fraud on its own contracts but then
    sent people out measuring stumps and limbs to deny
    reimbursements to local school districts.
        I have heard dozens of complaints from local officials
    about the cost of turnover among FEMA representatives. And
    Madam Chairman, I am a witness to this. In the immediate
    aftermath of the storm, FEMA filled its ranks by taking people
    from other government agencies, putting a FEMA jacket on them
    and sending them out to make decisions that involved millions
    of dollars. The FEMA representative on scene would go forth and
    tell a local county supervisor or a mayor or a school
    superintendent, go ahead and do that, we will reimburse it.
    When the bill came to be paid, that FEMA representative was
    long gone. The one that took their place then questions whether
    or not he was allowed in the first place.
        And so what we would ask for is more professionalism in the
    FEMA ranks. Don't send people down to a disaster area for a day
    or 2 or week or 2, or even a month or 2. If the recovery is
    going to take 10 to 20 months then we have to have a commitment
    from the FEMA employees to stay there for the duration so that
    a commitment made on the part of our Nation one day is upheld
    by our Nation when the bill comes due months later.
        Madam Chairman, you have been very, very generous. As you
    can see I still have a couple more pages. I want to submit that
    for the record. And I think we have made the points we need to
    make, and above all, I want to thank you for hearing us out.
    There is a lot to be done on the gulf coast we need our
    Nation's help to get this done. I just want to see to it that
    it is done in a cost-effective manner for every American and
    that the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi and the entire gulf
    coast are treated fairly.
        Thank you for having this hearing.
        Ms. Norton. I want to thank you Mr. Taylor. Your testimony
    contained just the sort of concrete examples we are looking
    for. We don't want to sit here and kind of dream up examples
    from what we read in the newspaper. That is why we are hearing
    directly from Members of Congress who are the first person
    people turn to. They don't turn to the committee. They turn to
    you. So this is just the kind of testimony we are after.
        And I am pleased to welcome my good friend, Mr. Pickering,
    who I worked with in the past and I am pleased to hear his
    testimony as well.

     STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHARLES PICKERING, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                 CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

        Mr. Pickering. Madam Chair and Mr. Graves, as the ranking
    member, I appreciate the committee's hearing those from
    Mississippi and Louisiana as we try to find the ways to finish
    our recovery and to speed the recovery and get the help to our
    communities back home.
        I want to commend Congressman Taylor for his
    recommendations and his proposals and I want to join with him
    in complete agreement on his proposals, his identification of
    the problems that are remaining and to join with him as he has
    led the way on the Mississippi gulf coast and has been a great
    example of someone who serves, leads and stands with his people
    during a time of disaster.
        I want to join him in talking about many of the same
    issues, and I will get to that. But first, let me just say as
    we look at FEMA not only as we finish the recovery, but as we
    look at the future reforms, you look toward the Coast Guard and
    you see a mission-oriented culture, one that emphasizes speed
    to rescue because they know that a life is at stake and you may
    have that golden hour in which you can make a difference.
        And we need to look at how we have FEMA structured and all
    of the bureaucracies that go with it and the inability to act
    in a quick, rapid way.
        Just as individuals can die or lose quality of life over a
    long period of time, if we do not quickly assist communities,
    communities too can die or have irreparable damage. And we do a
    disservice here in Congress not to reform and not to find the
    common sense solutions that will help not only Coast Guard
    quickly rescue, but have FEMA quickly recover and rebuild
    working with our State and local officials and the non profits
    and the voluntary organizations.
        In joining with Congressman Taylor, one of the things we
    repeatedly hear from our local officials is that we have too
    high a staff turnover in FEMA, no empowerment at the field
    level, no decision maker, no joint decision maker. You have
    multiple organizations. For example the IG can overrule the
    FEMA or the MEMA officials who have reached an agreement on a
    lot of the reimbursements on the schools and on the debris and
    on the other public facilities.
        And so, if we could unify command, unify leadership so you
    have one place to get the one answer that will give certainty
    and speed and stop the paralysis or the burden that is
    happening in many of our communities. If we could bring an FCO-
    like individual who is empowered to make the decisions to
    support the local communities' good faith reliance on the
    directions given to the local officials in the beginning or the
    mid-point of the recovery.
        Only one-third of the transitional recovery office in
    Mississippi is permanently staffed. We need more staff to
    finish the job. Our theory is, as we go to the next hurricane
    season, if there is another hurricane with much of the
    outstanding work still pending in Mississippi, that we will
    lose the resources and what is a burden today could halt the
    recovery and do even more damage. We need quick assistance to
    finish the storm recovery. And that means more staff and a
    clear commander to finish the job, an FCO.
        The next issue is one that Congressman Taylor mentioned as
    well. We have 231 project worksheets that have been completed.
    Out of those, 132 have been pending for over 90 days. They have
    been completed. They have met all the standards. But they have
    not been reimbursed. And we need to find either the staff or
    the will to resolve those pending work projects that accounts
    to $41 million that is primarily on small communities, small
    counties, and in small companies that did the work after the
    storm.
        If we can give FEMA a date certain to close out this
    process, give them the staff and the leadership to be able to
    implement that date certain requirement, then I believe that
    will go a long way and give greater confidence and certainty.
        The reasonableness issue that Congressman Taylor mentioned,
    many of you are communities about half the debris was done by
    local communities and half done by the Corps of Engineers
    through FEMA and with a National contract.
        Many of our communities are being rejected reimbursement
    even though the cost of the debris removal was the same or
    lower than the cost of the Federal contract.
        And it seems to me if it is reasonable for the Federal side
    to get the reimbursement, it should not be--a local community
    should not be penalized or denied the reimbursement.
        Another example down on the coast when it comes to the 50
    percent rule, there was a school in Diberville, where the
    cafeteria was ruled that it was not damaged over 50 percent
    therefore it could not be replaced. But all the other
    classrooms were.
        They wanted to move 7 miles inland to be able to have
    higher ground to be able to have an alternative project and to
    have a safer place for the school to be rebuilt. They could do
    the classrooms, but they couldn't do the cafeteria. And now you
    tell me how does a school not have a cafeteria or transport
    students back and forth from a cafeteria to the classroom? That
    type of common sense ability to say this is a way that we can
    do it that is safer, stronger and better for the school and it
    should be reimbursed.
        And just finishing, Madam Chair, if we could empower a
    decision maker in Mississippi to finish the recovery, if we can
    get the staff necessary to do it, if we can have a time table,
    a time certain and a quick adjudication or arbitration process
    so that the reimbursements that are owed are done as quickly as
    possible. And then as we look forward to the next storms, we
    need to look for ways to emphasize the local response, similar
    to the Florida model of having contracts in place at the local
    level prestorm. We need to look at imposing prompt payment
    standards on FEMA and its reimbursements like we do in many
    areas of the Federal Government so that 2 and 3 years after a
    storm, we still don't have outstanding issues of payments and
    reimbursement.
        I believe the CBDG and the grants approach that has been
    used in the New Orleans and in Mississippi is an example of
    what can be done used at the front end of the storm not only at
    the back end, so you can have an insurance type model, so that
    if the assessment of the public facilities of an area equal a
    certain amount that a grant can be given to them without all
    the micromanagement, all of the bureaucracy and all the
    paralysis that comes from having to get every bathroom, every
    light bulb, every doorway, every square footage signed off by a
    Federal agency so that we can streamline the process and so
    that the rapid recovery can also be part of our strategy
    instead of the long delays that we are seeing in recovery. We
    need the rescue and recovery to have the same mission and that
    is a fast, speedy, efficient and accountable recovery.
        There are some other issues and I will be glad to submit
    those to the record. I know that I have gone over my time, but
    I do want to thank the committee and join with Congressman
    Taylor and the other gulf coast members as we find ways to help
    finish this recovery and then reform for the next storm. Thank
    you.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Pickering. Your district also
    was impacted we know by Representative Taylor's, he has gone to
    great pains to remind us.
        Mr. Pickering. His district was hit much harder, but the
    storm went all the way up, 150 miles into Mississippi. We were
    we were able to recover fairly quickly and we still have some
    issues in the counties I represent of still not being
    reimbursed. So it is across the board that we have some of the
    same problems.
        Ms. Norton. Let me ask you both, basically, what runs
    through your testimony is the, what would appear to be
    rigidities in the way FEMA deals with some of the issues which,
    anyone can see, from hearing you, and a common sense practical
    basis are issues that need to be dealt with forthwith. You may
    recall that after the disaster, we hauled in officials from the
    gulf coast trying to make sure that the money that was about to
    go out here in record numbers was not wasted.
        And if the truth be told, not so much I must say on the
    gulf coast but generally one of the major issues that has
    affected Congress in the last several years has been contract
    issues where the difficulty the Federal Government has in
    monitoring contracts, billions of dollars wasted from Iraq to
    contracts in this country for various purposes and lots of
    oversight now going on.
        Be assured that we are sitting in order to provide what we
    regard as one time, one place relief so we understand we are
    dealing with a special circumstance. But against the backdrop,
    I have just mentioned any ideas you have on the necessary
    flexibility in contracts in particular and reconciling that
    with the Federal system to obligate funds in a manner that can
    be audited and accounted for so that the agency doesn't have
    this coming back at them? Have you thought--and I recognize you
    are not auditing experts. But at the same time, we go about
    these flexibilities that is going to be a major issue.
        How can you streamline it while making sure that if
    somebody goes in and audits it they don't just find here there
    and everywhere waste that then comes back and haunts the
    agency? Yes, sir.
        Mr. Taylor. Madam Chairman, if I may, what I was really
    struck by was in the immediate aftermath of the storm, people
    just made decisions. My two mayors closest to my personal home
    sent policemen to the Wal-Mart, to the grocery store, to two
    grocery stores, posted them at the door and said, look, FEMA is
    not here. People have to eat. They can go in and they can take
    food they can take a change of clothes. If they take anything
    other than that they are going to be arrested. I was there when
    the head of the Mississippi emergency management told a guy who
    had just delivered a load of ice that he was commandeering his
    truck because we had to have a temporary morgue. Good decisions
    were made on the spot by people who knew this is what we have
    to do.
        And then you contrast that with some of the examples I have
    given you 20 months after the fact, because I think you really
    are dealing with, to a very large extent, a lack of
    professionalism within FEMA, people who don't know the rules,
    people who are afraid of the rules and then people who rely on
    the rules for a reason to say no which as we all know is the
    easiest thing to do.
        What I would recommend is some sort of a cafeteria of
    options. You know some of these communities are--I made mention
    of the Old Bay St. Louis schools built there since 1920s. I
    would hope that that city would be given the option of saying
    there is a historic structure, it is getting close to 100 years
    old. Sure, if you want to bring it up to OSHA, of you want to
    bring it up to ADA standards, if you feel that that is an
    integral part of your community and you have lost so much in
    your community and you want this as one of those things that
    you want to be a cornerstone yes we will give you the option of
    restoring it.
        If, on the other hand, if the local community says you know
    what, we just as soon have as Chip mentioned a new school
    further inland that won't flood next time, they ought to have
    that option as well.
        But I think what we are going to have to do legislatively
    is spell that out for those many options exist. And above all,
    I can't emphasize enough, we had people come down to help us
    who may have been great foresters, who may have known a world
    about aqua culture, who may have known a lot about boll
    weevils. All good in their own profession. But what we saw was
    for lack of a professional staff at FEMA, these people were
    literally grabbed, sent down to south Mississippi. Somebody
    slapped a FEMA jacket on them and said now you are an expert.
    They didn't know the job. It wasn't fair to them. It wasn't
    fair to the local communities.
        The other thing I would ask to come out of this is if we
    have to spell it out in the code, some sort of professional
    qualifications for people who are going to respond to these
    types of disasters and make multi-million dollar decisions. And
    I think both of those them are important. A cafeteria plan, you
    and I have a cafeteria plan on our options on our health care.
    The cities ought to have a cafeteria plan of options of how to
    respond to these storms and what they want to do with their
    buildings.
        Ms. Norton. Some of what you describe would mean that if
    FEMA did it the way they "usually do," they would spending more
    money and perhaps even wasting money. You don't want to build--
    look, this is even, on the best of circumstances, this is a
    flood prone area. So obviously, we don't want to build in a
    way--but let me suggest just hearing your testimony, there is a
    dichotomy between two kinds of expenditures. One which is truly
    unconscionable, if you consider the people who went out and did
    what they had to do to help people survive, that is
    reimbursements that are still outstanding.
        It seems to me that on those, the committee could look at a
    fast way to get those reimbursements done. They were done, one
    could carve out a period of time, a kind of reimbursement after
    the Act and that is one category.
        There are ongoing matters which fit the gulf coast and
    probably wouldn't fit other places where one could show--it
    seems to me--I am relying on your testimony now--that to do it
    the way they are going to do it is either wasteful to the
    jurisdiction or causes loss to FEMA funds, or is wasteful to
    the Federal Government.
        I am looking at your testimony about when to consolidate
    additional classrooms. Now, it does even say that they want
    more classrooms but they want to consolidate them. And I am
    looking on Page--they are not numbered. The school district
    would rather consolidate the elementary schools by building
    additional classrooms at north Bay elementary school. But they
    would lose 25 percent of FEMA funds for the second street if
    they do so.
        Mr. Taylor. Yes, ma'am.
        Ms. Norton. You are not saying it would cost more are you?
        Mr. Taylor. It would cost more then, and again, I am asking
    you to keep in mind I used to be a city councilman in that
    town. The cities of Mississippi live on sales tax. That is
    their primary source of revenue. The cities that were the most
    dramatically impacted by the storm lost all their stores. They
    have no source of revenue. The city of Pass Christian to this
    day really does not have a major store in the town. So Pass
    Christian is a perfect example.
        Bay St. Louis is a very good example of a city that has
    lost a great deal of tax revenue coming in, has lost most of
    their buildings and now is in a position of having to replace
    them. So when a Federal Government tells a city like Bay San
    Louis or Pass Christian, you are going to have to pay 25
    percent more to do it right, where is the more going to come
    from.
        Ms. Norton. Some of this is case-by-case, but again, in
    case-by-case, it does seem to me you could figure out whether
    or not you are wasting money by doing it the old way.
        Mr. Taylor. Mrs. Norton, can I just throw one more thing at
    you because this is related to your jurisdiction. We are 20
    months after the storm. And FEMA has not updated the flood
    maps. You mentioned flooding. You mentioned do we really want
    to build a school in a place where it is going to flood? Twenty
    months after the storm, those maps have not been submitted to
    the cities. The cities are operating under interim rules that
    said, go back and tell everybody you have to build 4 feet
    higher than you used to be. I know it is a shared jurisdiction,
    but it has to start with FEMA. If FEMA is going to come up with
    rules saying you have to be at a certain elevation, they have
    to come up with flood maps.
        Lastly, and I tried to shorten my testimony, they have to
    use some common sense. Obviously you want a school in a place
    that is not going to flood. You want it high enough that it is
    not going to flood. But telling a bus stop that you won't
    repair that facility for a bus stop unless it is 25 feet above
    sea level when the ground level is 3 feet above sea level is
    insane. A beach rest room telling them it has to be 25 feet
    above sea level when the beach is at sea level is insane. There
    are a lot of ways to work around this----
        Ms. Norton. The bias toward building the same facility
    cannot obtain in such a catastrophic way. They of course have
    the issue. We see what the issue is. People can game the system
    to say now that we have got FEMA here why don't we build a
    state of the art system. On the other hand where there is a
    catastrophic event, you really don't have the option of
    building the same facility where it will, in fact, in a flood
    prone area encounter the same problems. This notion about
    building on sticks and you have to do so for the bus stop that
    is really late night comedy stuff.
        Mr. Taylor. But Madam Chairman, that is a real life
    example----
        Ms. Norton. Let me just say this. FEMA does have the
    flexibility to do some of this. But you can see they are afraid
    to do it and that is what the committee's job is. I don't have
    a lot of--your examples really say the--really tell the
    stories. One thing that really bothers me a great deal, it
    would bother me beyond the gulf coast, I think the committee
    needs to look more seriously at this period that you say on
    page 2 of your testimony, Mr. Taylor, that FEMA is supposed to
    pay 90 percent of the cost of rebuilding these facilities
    narrows the scope to exclude many costs that are necessary to
    comply with building codes and standards.
        I asked staff what does she know about this, and I said
    that sounds nonsensical, we are going to build not to code, and
    they may have the notion that you have to build it to the old
    code that was in existence when it was built rather than the
    code that the agency has been at pains to upgrade the matter
    to, but how could the Federal Government possibly justify not
    building to code, whatever is the code in existence now?
        Those are examples of things we are going to have to look
    at.
        Certainly in your area--and I would say I would really want
    to look at the notion of recognizing that costs may be involved
    and we will have to look more closely if we talk about
    noncatastrophic areas. But I would hate the Federal Government
    to be caught not building to code when States have required,
    seems to me quite justifiably, that facilities come up to code
    needs a lot of scrutiny.
        Mr. Taylor. Madam Chair, just the last point, the Americans
    with Disability Act was passed after most of these schools were
    built. So that is one code change that is obviously expensive,
    obviously done for the right reasons, but something that should
    be addressed and hopefully, since our Nation has mandated it
    now and I voted for it----
        Mr. Ortiz. There is no way in which the Federal Government,
    which administers the ADA, is going to say build but not in
    compliance with the ADA. We have to make that plain. We have to
    make that plain. Mr. Graves.
        Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chairman. In our FEMA reform
    bill that we passed last year, I know you guys were pretty
    active in creating a long-term recovery office and you are
    supposed to hire 2- and 3-year employees so that they would be
    around because, Gene, you have obviously spoken to the problems
    we are having, and Chip, you did, too, to the guys coming in
    and making decisions and then being gone. We were supposed to
    have these 2- and 3-year employees. And we are also supposed to
    push the decision making authority down to the Gulf Coast
    Recovery Authority that was there.
        Now, my question is are these things not happening? And is
    DHS--because I know there was pushback from the Department of
    Homeland Security on what we were trying to do. Are they still
    making all those decisions at the top? Are they not pushing it
    down? Either one of you.
        Mr. Pickering. For example, the transitional recovery
    office, we are now in our third acting director and that is not
    a permanent director. It is the third acting director. And
    again, a lot of that office we only have one-third staffing.
    And so a lot of what we try to implement in the FEMA reform is
    not being carried out. And I think that is why 20 months out of
    the storm they don't have the staff to be able to make the
    final decisions to make, to close out a lot of the work orders
    that have been done and completed and a lot of the issues. You
    have a split between the IG and the office, and they make
    conflicting decisions, and then it paralyzes any resolution so
    you have no quick resolution mechanism.
        And so I think that if we can give deadlines, one of the
    things that Gene mentioned not to have the FEMA flood maps. We
    need a deadline for that. We need deadlines for these
    reimbursements or a dispute mechanism that will allow us to
    quickly get there.
        And we need to direct FEMA to fully staff and to get
    someone in charge so that there is a clear command and control.
        Mr. Graves. Three acting directors.
        Mr. Pickering. And that is in 20 months.
        Mr. Taylor. And again, not a single public building has
    been replaced in coastal Mississippi. Look they are good
    sports. They are working out temporary trailers. They are doing
    their jobs, but at some point, these trailers themselves become
    a hazard. In fact, they become a hazard the next hurricane
    season because they become shrapnel when the wind grabs them.
    They are just not made to be down there when the wind blows
    over 100 miles per hour.
        Mr. Pickering. Let me just add that everything that slows
    the recovery increases the cost of recovery, labor material and
    land goes up. Time is money. And what they--for example, all
    these small companies and counties and communities if you have
    $41 million outstanding, and you are having to bear all the
    interest and all the delays and all the losses and you don't
    have sales tax, all the burden is on the local community. We
    really need to shift that, have a prompt payment requirement,
    so that if the Federal Government doesn't reimburse in a timely
    way then the Federal Government has to pay penalties and
    interest just like an individual taxpayer does if they don't
    pay their tax bill on time.
        So we need fairness. We need quick response. And we need
    some resources just to make sure that FEMA has the people to do
    the job.
        Mr. Graves. The Federal Government obviously ought to start
    acting a little bit more like everybody else has to and just as
    you say, do their job, but the longer this stuff waits, the
    more it costs. You are exactly right, and it continues to add
    to it.
        Mr. Pickering. Mr. Graves, let me just add, Madam Chair had
    asked about contracts. Let me just give you an example as we
    look forward. We had about 40 million cubic yards of debris
    just in Mississippi. Now half of that was done through a
    Federal contract, and the rest was done by local communities,
    and counties roughly equal each about 20 million. And what we
    have seen from the data that we have is that the local
    communities cleaned up the debris at about half the cost that
    the Federal Government did. The Federal cubic yard average was
    $31 a cubic yard and the average for local community was around
    $15 a cubic yard. Now that is a huge difference in resources to
    the taxpayer but also the local communities usually did it
    faster. The local communities are the ones who are getting
    stuck without their bills being paid and the local companies
    are having to carry all that cost.
        So they did a--now, I do think and agree with Congressman
    Taylor that there is going to be some places that have to have
    the Federal contract and the Federal assistance, but we need to
    shift in the future to emphasize having local contracts in
    place because it is best for the taxpayer and best for the
    local communities.
        And I think it speeds recovery. And then if we can fix the
    reimbursement to local communities, and in a timely way, then I
    think you have an ability to take an organization, FEMA, that
    is slowing recovery and make it actually accelerate the
    recovery.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much. Those of you who can vote
    have a vote coming up in a moment. And we want to finish with
    this panel. And I have only one question. I was a little
    perplexed by the first page of your testimony.
        Mr. Taylor, in which you appear to complain about the
    building of a bridge across the Bay without building any
    public--any significant public buildings. I understand about
    the public buildings. Are you saying the bridge was not vital
    or necessary.
        Mr. Taylor. Oh, no, ma'am, we are very grateful for that
    bridge, believe me, these are two communities that used to be
    joined at the hip. The points I am making is if they build a
    bridge from scratch in 20 months, they ought to be able to
    build a city hall or a school.
        Ms. Norton. I see, yes, indeed it would. Finally, just let
    me say to you before you go to vote what we are discussing here
    are really the day-to-day matters that determine for people
    whether they want to continue to live in this major part of the
    country, and to say to their relatives who haven't decided
    whether to come home, whether or not to come home or not, we--
    these may seem small matters to people outside of your
    jurisdictions. But these are the things closest to the people.
    And these are the things that make the decision for them.
        I want to put you on notice that we are later going to have
    a hearing or a set of hearings that I call repopulation and
    continuing population growth in the gulf coast. And these
    hearings are going to focus on three issues which we also think
    everything is said and done, is going to decide the issues of
    population growth.
        These are insurance, you can talk about housing until you
    are blue in the face but if we don't find a way for people to
    get insurance, people understand they are not supposed to come
    back. Talking about levees, how much assurance do people need
    that they are not going to be subject to another flood
    tomorrow. And the third thing is public safety. These things
    are overarching issues, just as we think these are the issues
    that decide people right now.
        The difference is that these issues are the issues that
    people are using to make their decision right now whether to
    come home, whether to stay or whether to do what Americans have
    done since the beginning of our country, move on. This the
    great frontier. Mississippi was one of the places that you went
    to. You left the east coast. You left the midwest. Hey, guess
    what, we are at the end of the frontier. And we want to make
    sure that the gulf coast, both of these places, were prime
    sources of revenue for their States. They lost their tax base.
    That means your States are out of luck. We want to make sure
    that repopulation where oil is, this is where many of our
    resources are. We want to make sure that these States are
    repopulated. We want to do it now, to make sure that FEMA hops
    over all of this rigidity and makes a decision it must make
    now.
        And we want to do it in the long run to make sure people
    understand that the overarching issues can be dealt with and
    are being dealt with, and I hope I haven't made you miss a
    vote, but cast one for me, too, if you would.
        Mr. Taylor. Madam Chairwoman, you may live 1,100 miles from
    south Mississippi, but you could not have summed up better what
    needs to be done than you just did, so thank you very much.
        Mr. Pickering. Thank you.
        Ms. Norton. We will reconvene, it is my understanding there
    will be 5 votes, 45 minutes, and I guess it is the New Orleans
    Louisiana delegation we will hear from you which is our last
    set of members.
        Ms. Norton. In light of the hour, we are going to resume
    testimony with the members of the Louisiana delegation who are
    here. Others, as they come, of course, can join them. So I am
    pleased to welcome Mr. Baker, who I think is a member of the
    committee. And Mr. Boustany, to begin their testimony.
        Mr. Baker. I am sorry, Mr. Boustany, is also a member of
    the committee.
        Ms. Norton. Mr. Baker.

       STATEMENT OF THE HON. RICHARD BAKER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

        Mr. Baker. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your
    courtesy in conducting the hearing and in moving ahead in such
    a timely manner. I wish to preface my remarks which are a very
    succinct summary of the written statement by expressing the
    view that the rules and mechanisms in place from FEMA to
    homeland security to everyone never contemplated resolution of
    an event so catastrophic in scope, and I believe in most
    instances, the rules are constructed for matters of
    inconvenience lasting a few days when power outages are
    minimal, when there has been relatively modest dislocation of
    individuals and where most of the social order of the community
    affected remains intact, meaning law and order, schools,
    grocery stores, and facilities generally needed to accommodate
    the needs of those living there.
        In this instance, in response to the Katrina-Rita matter,
    these storms were so overwhelming they overwhelmed the law rule
    and common sense. For example, it may not be uncustomary for
    the expenses of FEMA in a mobilization effort of short
    duration, to have a very high administrative costs. In the
    first quarter of the storm's resolution, 26 percent of all the
    moneys that the public assumed were going to help individuals
    went first to pay FEMA operations, and that is administrative
    costs, that is not FEMA grants or assistance given to
    individuals. I thought that rather high, but I examined it
    after the last 12 months of operation, and the number still
    remains about 22 percent.
        In the case of Louisiana, that was a recipient of slightly
    more than $32 billion, far less than some would have imagined,
    about $7.5 billion of that leaving us with a net of 25 actually
    went to FEMA first. That is a matter which I believe, at least
    for the sake of accuracy and reporting, should have a separate
    funding category away from that which is categorized as
    assistance to communities.
        So taxpayers have some better understanding about where
    their dollars are actually being allocated. Secondly, is that
    some significant disparity with the treatment with local
    officials and local responders in the way their expenses were
    characterized and reimbursed. One area that has been most
    sensitive is the area of lost revenues or foregone revenues. In
    the case of the most natural disasters, there are public
    facilities which are inconvenienced for a matter of a few days
    at worst, often the inconveniences over a weekend where there
    was no planned activity. In the case of Baton Rouge and our
    river center, which is an enormous facility that housed, at one
    time, housed over 7,000 people, it was out of utilization for
    approximately 2 months. This was not by voluntary act of the
    city, it was by FEMA's decision to take that for its purposes.
    Not that that wasn't a legitimate and reasonable thing to do.
    But the expenses, the revenue lost to that entity because of
    the forced utilization over a two-month period has a direct
    bottom line impact on the viability of that governmental entity
    over the course of a year.
        But yet that is not now something in these extreme
    circumstances which can be considered as a reimbursable item.
    Also in analyzing the method of expenditure, there was no
    common standard that taxpayer consequence be a priority in
    determining what action should be taken. As a, for example, we
    have in Financial Services changed modestly the requirement
    that a housing resolution not be exclusively temporary in
    nature. The reason for that is modular housing put on a slab--
    this comes from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have been
    constructed in 90 days or less on available properties for a
    cost per unit on average of $60,000. The cost on average per
    unit to install--to acquire move install and make the trailer
    habitable was $72,000.
        Secondly, I don't know how the counting was done on how
    many trailers initially should be acquired. I don't believe
    there was a survey of any sort from those persons who were in
    the various centers. If trailers were made available, would you
    utilize it? It is my understanding that although there are
    9,000 trailers still in Hope, Arkansas on a $5 million gravel
    pad, although 4,000 units have never been deployed or unwrapped
    as they call it. It seems that excessive expenditure was not
    warranted, and in instances since Katrina, those trailers have
    remained undeployed despite the fact there have been others who
    have lost their housing inventory.
        Two other recommendations--and I shall be brief. One is
    more the predeployment storm season of various assets. There is
    one big box store in the country. There are many, but one in
    particular who has their own meteorological department. They
    track these storms the way homeowners track. And when the storm
    is a few hours out, they redivert Pop Tarts and batteries and
    lanterns to those locations. When the storm path changes or the
    storm is leaving, they will bring in generators, blankets,
    tarps those things people need after the storm.
        My observation is in speaking to some of the management,
    they do a much better job of deploying needed resources into
    the marketplace and their penetration into residential areas is
    quite significant that if we were to engage in some sort of
    Federal negotiation prior to each storm season, we are a month
    away, what would be our response tomorrow if a storm came
    across North Carolina? Where are the Federal resources? And it
    is the emergency nature of the spending pattern that spikes the
    cost rather than a prenegotiated contract for deployment of,
    say, an overnight basket for an individual with a blanket, a
    flashlight, a bottle of water and a few Pop Tarts. Those could
    be readily displayed by the box store itself or handled by the
    National Guard or those volunteers.
        Another point, when individuals came with manufactured
    material in the manufactured seal to the river center to give
    the material to the Red Cross volunteers and others managing
    the center. That was not accepted. We have a very large
    bottling facility in my city capable of manufacturing
    considerable amounts of bottled water. Unless you had a
    previously agreed-upon purchase agreement relationship with the
    Red Cross, those contributions were not made available at great
    loss to those individuals who were of necessity in the river
    center. One last idea, in this day and age of Internet access
    and sophisticated technological deployment, we should have in
    place some catastrophic risk analysis system that is in real-
    time. By that, I mean you could turn on your TV and go to a
    channel, maybe run by the weather station, go to your computer
    on the Internet, and there should be an ability of FEMA, the
    National Weather Association, other critical entities,
    including State police to give you highway conditions, the
    hotel-motel association where you could look on the map before
    the storm's landfall, and by color coding, see whether or not
    you are at risk, see whether the traffic is flowing on
    particular evacuation routes, even display the availability of
    hotel rooms so people get a sense that this thing is coming and
    if I don't get out now, the roads are going to be impassible or
    I am not going to be able to find temporary housing for my
    family. It is not that easy to construct, but it would be
    vitally important. This would be real-time data so that any
    input from any Agency would go into an algorithm and present
    the map based on the real-time risk assessments.
        I think something of that sort would greatly facilitate
    earlier departure by residents at risk and enable those of us
    who are wanting to be of assistance to be better informed about
    the hazards that we face. With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Baker. I am reminded of the
    Weather Channel which almost is there. If you look at the
    Weather Channel, very scientific movement of the storm.
        Mr. Baker. It wouldn't take much to upgrade that to where
    it would be a real systemic matter on housing transportation
    and others.
        Ms. Norton. Absolutely. Mr. Boustany.

      STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHARLES BOUSTANY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

        Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for
    providing me the opportunity, and I would ask unanimous consent
    to stick my entire written record--written statement in the
    record. Let me start by saying from the beginning, this
    subcommittee has been a very strong advocate as we have worked
    together to recover in the gulf coast. And I am pleased that
    the tradition continues today with this hearing. I do want to
    remind my colleagues that there were two storms of similar
    magnitude that hit the gulf coast in 2005; Hurricane Rita, the
    second storm, brought high winds in excess of 120 miles per
    hour and a storm surge equivalent to that of a category 5
    storm. The total damage is estimated at approximately $10
    billion, making Rita--which we call the forgotten storm in my
    district--the third costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

        Eighteen months after the storm, many impacted local
    governments organizations and individuals have simply chosen to
    move on rather than wait for aid. In addition, much of the
    disaster assistance, literally billions of dollars worth is now
    being held up by bureaucratic red tape at the State level,
    which Congress has little control over. The subcommittee can
    make a big difference by examining some of the lessons we have
    learned and consider possible changes to the Stafford Act that
    might help prevent these problems from recurring. Inconsistent
    FEMA policies and procedures and constant staff turnover have
    plagued recovery efforts. For Vermilion Parish for instance, in
    Vermilion Parish officials spent months working under the
    assumption that two school buildings damaged by the storm were
    eligible to be rebuilt. After parish officials bought land to
    accommodate one of the schools, it was then subsequently
    determined that a low-level FEMA field representative had made
    a mistake and, in fact, a very costly mistake and the schools,
    in fact, would not be rebuilt.
        The information being provided by FEMA should be accurate
    and consistent. More needs to be done to implement the reforms
    Congress passed last year to prevent staff turnover, and to
    ensure stability in the regional offices. I can tell you as a
    heart surgeon, I would never start a heart operation with an
    inexperienced team and then have turnover in the midst of the
    operation. That is just not good practice. And I think the same
    applies to FEMA during emergency circumstances. We also need to
    do a better job of getting Federal disaster aid into the hands
    of victims quickly and efficiently while still providing
    safeguards against fraud and abuse. Much of the aid Congress
    approved last year is still sitting in Baton Rouge, our State
    capital, waiting to be spent.
        According to FEMA, only $27 million of the $99 million
    currently available in public assistance funds for Cameron
    Parish have been released. The current payment system should be
    streamlined so that applicants are not required to go through
    multiple layers of government bureaucracy to receive payments.
    FEMA should also be able to reimburse other Federal agencies
    for work they perform after the disaster. Over 250,000 dump
    truckloads of posthurricane debris including tanks as large as
    18 wheelers were scattered throughout the Sabine National
    Wildlife Refuge. The refuge did not have the funds for cleanup
    and was ineligible for reimbursement under the Stafford Act.
        Eight months later, Congress ultimately provided funding
    for the cleanup, but we shouldn't have to wait for
    congressional earmark to move forward while thousands of
    gallons of hazardous material threaten our wetlands and
    critical habitats. There ought to be an interim agency in
    place. Louisiana's local State and law enforcement also had to
    wait nearly 6 months to receive vital funding to aid in their
    justice system recovery.
        As a result, we learned that State and local agencies can
    better serve the public and respond to law enforcement needs in
    a disaster area quickly if funds are provided directly through
    the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is
    the traditional conduit for Federal law enforcement funding. I
    would like to work with the subcommittee to provide FEMA with
    the authority to release emergency funds directly to the
    Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance to aid law
    enforcement recovery efforts. I think this is very important.
        Debris removal on private lands is another issue that is
    not so cut and dry. Taxpayers certainly should not have to foot
    the bill for cleanup on private lands. But in one instance, a
    public building was washed away and set on private land within
    a subdivision. The homeowners were required to pay for the cost
    of removing public debris. The Stafford Act does not currently
    allow for reimbursement for removal of public debris on private
    lands. And this is something that should be addressed. FEMA
    should also be required to reimburse expenses incurred for
    reinternment. This is an issue we saw in Cameron Parish, and I
    believe it also happened in Orleans Parish as well.
        In Cameron Parish nearly 350 bodies crypts and caskets had
    to be reinterned after the storm. Local mortuaries undertook
    the task at their own expense and still have not been
    reimbursed. We should respect the deceased and ensure that the
    remains are interned quickly and with the dignity that they
    deserve. We shouldn't have to spend months and months trying to
    figure out whose responsibility it is to bear this cost.
        There is no doubt that Hurricane Rita has forever changed
    the coast, but no force of nature is strong enough to destroy
    the spirit that is helping the people of southwest Louisiana
    recover and rebuild. Much more work remains to be done, but we
    can learn from this tragedy and prepare ourselves for future
    disasters of the magnitude of Katrina and Rita. The
    subcommittee should use this unique opportunity to make the
    changes that need to be made now so that future recovery
    efforts aren't hindered. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I will be
    happy to answer any questions, Madam Chairman.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Boustany. I will go on
    to Mr. Jefferson. He was actually the first in the room here
    when we opened the hearing.

     STATEMENT OF THE HON. WILLIAM JEFFERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

        Mr. Jefferson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have had the
    benefit of hearing everyone's testimony, except Mr. Jindal's
    now, since I have been here since 2:00. It is a wonderful
    opportunity to be here with you, and I thank you very much for
    this chance to appear before your subcommittee. In New Orleans
    now, there are some 220,000 people who are not back home. Half
    our schools aren't open, half our hospitals aren't open, day
    care centers aren't open. The place really isn't really open
    for business fully. Our city has about 6 percent of its tax
    base back in place.
        As we consider how to best deal with the challenges that
    face us in rebuilding the gulf coast, we have the opportunity
    to prevent some things that went wrong from happening in the
    future. The Stafford Act was designed to provide a
    comprehensive framework for the government's response to a
    major disaster. As we have learned many aspects of it, however,
    however well meaning they are worked against this objective.
        I would like to highlight some of the more pressing needs
    that our community faced and in dealing with the limitations of
    the Stafford Act, and some ways that I suggest we may remove
    some of them. Providing transitional housing for our residents
    who wish to return is the most pressing issue we face. Without
    adequate transitional housing stock, our residents have no
    choice but to stay away from the city they call home and cannot
    begin to rebuild until they have resolved temporary housing
    needs.
        A good option for housing displaced residents would be to
    expand the rental reimbursement program and to provide more
    flexibility to meet the needs of specific disasters. In New
    Orleans, we have had numerous owners of damaged apartment
    buildings, for example, offer to use their own funds to
    rehabilitate their property in exchange for guarantees from
    FEMA that it would pay for the rates for its returnees.
        In this scenario, the local property owner would benefit
    from having a guaranteed revenue source and the tenants would
    be back at home to work school jobs and permanent housing
    solutions would also be in safe structures. Unfortunately, FEMA
    did not have the authority to set up such mutually beneficial
    arrangements and a great opportunity was lost. The Stafford Act
    relies too heavily on providing mobile or prefabricated housing
    units for displaced residents.
        Housing citizens in trailers acceptable on a short-term
    basis, maybe a month or so. However, a disaster of Katrina's
    magnitude long-term housing in trailers is blatantly
    unacceptable. We now are nearing the 2-year anniversary of the
    storm and we still have thousands of residents in trailers. As
    another hurricane season approaches, these individuals are in
    great danger should another catastrophic storm hit the gulf
    coast. Forgetting just after the storm and continue well into
    subsequent weeks, nations across the globe volunteered to send
    financial assistance, manpower support and goods in kind to
    help alleviate the situation.
        Unfortunately, our own incompetence left these generous
    offers on the table and the needs of thousands of hurricane
    victims went unfulfilled, an allegedly overtaxed FEMA simply
    didn't accept many these offers or slowed them down with
    bureaucratic inertia. From three of our staunchest allies even,
    Canada Israel and Great Britain, we declined 54 of 77 aid
    offers. Offers of communications equipment and aid supplies,
    two of our most pressing needs, were never accepted. Even when
    we did physically receive items from abroad there was no system
    in place to adequately distribute them. A shipment of medicine
    and supplies from Italy were left to perish in the elements and
    were rendered unusable, almost 6 million meals spoiled due to
    inadequate storage capabilities. Considering the tragic
    suffering of our citizens who were stranded in various places
    in our city with virtually no sustenance this massive oversight
    is especially cruel. The Greek government offered to send two
    large cruise ships to the gulf to serve as badly needed
    hospital facilities and housing for residents and emergency
    personnel. The offer was rejected by the Department of Homeland
    Security, but shortly thereafter, contracted with the carnival
    cruise lines for two of their ships at a cost of $249 million.
    We must increase our storage network's capabilities and
    establish a streamlined process by which donations in kind can
    be accepted and distributed.
        The United States Government should never again be in a
    position to turn down the generosity of other nations due to
    our own logistical problems. The safeguards and the Stafford
    Act designed to ensure that local businesses receive contracts
    have proven ineffective. Lucrative contracts were given to a
    small group of national firms who then had no incentive to give
    subcontracts to local companies and low performance standards.
    Worse, local contractors who were given low-tier contracts
    calling upon them to do the actual work, but for sometimes 1/7
    of the profits received by the large firms. We have seen the
    number of businesses in the New Orleans area left out in the
    cold, watching as trucks with out-of-state license plates
    perform work they rightfully should have been doing. Local
    preference guidelines must be codified to ensure that a
    specific number of contracts go to small business. Here is
    where I think--here is the question that is presented. The
    current language as written gives a preference to local
    businesses. But provides no mechanism or guidelines for its
    enforcement. Does a local preference mean all things being
    equal, the local firm is awarded the contract? Or does it mean
    competition must be set aside for qualified local firms unless
    none can be found?
        The latter construction is the only way to ensure that
    local--that the local program is really meaningful. I might say
    that at a different hearing in New Orleans we found out that 7
    percent of the contracts that were given out were to local
    firms. Their issue of prompt payment we heard about earlier. I
    won't dwell on that. I see my time is rapidly running out here.
    We have seen a logjam at the State level when dealing with CDBG
    funding. At the Federal level, money is allocated based on the
    needs of damaged areas. Once at the State level, however, this
    funding is diluted by other interests. Funding that must be
    approved by the State is slowed down by the legislating.
        Locales not damaged by the storm but which housed large
    numbers of evacuees for instance have sought reimbursement
    expenses incurred. With that relative strength in the State
    legislature, this topdown approach results in legislators
    outside of severely affected areas having a disproportionate
    influence over where funding ends up. The end result is that
    badly needed funds are not flowing nearly as quickly as they
    should, nor in full amounts to ravaged areas that Congress
    intended. To alleviate this problem and create a more flexible
    distribution of dollars, money should be granted parishes or
    counties based on the devastation each sustained.
        Due to the sheer magnitude of the destruction to our
    infrastructure, the gulf coast has countless construction
    projects funded through project worksheets. When calculating
    the cost to replace equipment vehicles or facilities, the
    Stafford Act provides that funding will be provided only for an
    equivalent item. This inflexible policy frequently results in
    absurd outcomes. If a building has a 20-year-old air
    conditioning system that is completely destroyed, then the only
    authorized replacement is another 20-year-old unit rather than
    a new unit that is comparable in performance.
        A century old school building can only be renovated to the
    specifications that existed prior to being damaged and cannot
    be improved in any way. This is simply a valuation issue that
    requires correction. Reimbursement costs should be provided to
    items or structures that are similar in function to what was
    there previously and not a carbon copy to what is likely
    outdated equipment. We learned a good number of lessons from
    this recovery and what should be done with respect to making
    this program work better, Stafford Act work better. There are
    many other things I could like to say, but my time is long
    past, and I would like to submit the rest of my testimony for
    the record, and I thank you for the chance to speak with you
    about this.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Jefferson.
        Ms. Norton. Mr. Jindal.

        STATEMENT OF THE HON. BOBBY JINDAL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

        Mr. Jindal. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, as well
    as the ranking member. Thank you for the opportunity to be
    here. I, too, would like to submit my written comments for the
    record. I will not repeat what many of my colleagues have said.
    First of all, I want to thank the committee for its interest in
    reforming the Stafford Act to help address not only the Katrina
    and Rita situations, but also future storms. I am also grateful
    that so many of our colleagues have worked with us to pass
    already some important FEMA reform provisions including last
    year's homeland security appropriations act. For example, we
    advocated for several measures, for example to improve FEMA's
    response and preparedness, creating and deploying Federal
    strike teams to provide the Federal Government first line
    response to a disaster. Secondly, establishing prenegotiated
    contracts to provide surge capacity for critical resources by
    the disaster.
        Third, establish national asset and inventory program to
    track and identify community needs during a national emergency.
    Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, transferring the
    preparedness functions within the Department of Homeland
    Security back to FEMA, so they can be unified with response as
    preparedness and response go hand in hand, and we must do all
    that we can to prepare for and respond to future disasters,
    especially as a start of the next hurricane season rapidly
    approaches. However, I believe even as it was essential to
    reform a system that was ineffective at both the State and the
    Federal levels there are still many outstanding needs and steps
    that we can take to break the current red tape and bureaucracy
    which are still plaguing recovery in the gulf coast.
        Twenty months after those hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, the
    inadequacy of the Stafford Act as well as the inconsistency and
    inflexibility in FEMA's interpretation of it and these
    extraordinary circumstances continue to hinder Louisiana in our
    rebuilding efforts. I would like to focus our attention on
    three main areas. The first is reforming the hazard mitigation
    grants program, but to provide more flexibility. Recently, our
    State has discovered a shortfall within the road home program
    and that highlights a perspective revenue stream that is
    current being disputed between FEMA and State of Louisiana. The
    hazard mitigation grant program was designed to supplement road
    home grants by the State by funding $1.2 billion in mitigation
    efforts. However, FEMA claims the current structure of the road
    home program is not compliant with the law governing the hazard
    mitigation program, in other words, the Stafford Act. If indeed
    it is true that the Stafford Act impedes the allocation of
    these grants to the road home program and its applicants, then
    certainly we could would call for adjustments to section
    5170(c) of this code to make this program more flexible so they
    can help homeowners rebuild.
        Additionally I would advocate that the Act should be
    amended to allow for global benefit cost approvals for
    mitigation measures that commonly prove effective. For example,
    when acquiring a block of 20 homes rather than doing a home-by-
    home structure-by-structure analysis, it should be enough to
    determine the total cost of all the homes and the total
    benefits of all those homes.
        So the first area we would recommend are making these
    housing mitigation grants more flexible. The second area is
    streamlining assistance, and we have heard from Mr. Boustany
    and others, according to FEMA's numbers, $4.76 billion was
    available to Louisiana for public infrastructure as of May 5.
    Of this, $2.34 billion was paid out to local applicants but
    FEMA claims $2.42 billion remains held up in the State and
    there are many causes for this bottleneck.
        For example, project worksheets defining what FEMA will pay
    are clear to local government entities are routinely
    underestimating those actual costs. While local officials work
    with FEMA staff to create new versions of these worksheets, the
    frequent rotation of FEMA staff has caused severe backlogs and
    continued substantiation of the same claims. This slows down an
    already tedious process. You have heard examples before already
    for example in the school systems. There are also examples in
    Madison bill with the library system where FEMA first estimated
    it would take $500,000 to $750,000 to repair all the storm
    damages and bring the facility to code. Now after months of
    arbitration, FEMA's now verbally offering $187,000, but only to
    restore the building to the condition it was before the storm,
    which was barely functional.
        If the library officials want to use the money for another
    purpose that offer would be rescinded. When you have the level
    of destruction over $6.3 billion, it is a stretch to assume
    that local stakeholders would be able to make substantial
    investments and be reimbursed later. A second change has to be
    allowing our public assistance applicants to replace destroyed
    equipment, such as vehicles, with new products instead of
    reversing those decisions. There has to be a mechanism for FEMA
    to up front these dollars so that local governments can proceed
    with reconstruction. There are many examples in my written
    testimony from St. Tammany Iberia and Vermilion and other
    parishes.
        Three specific examples when it comes to the public
    assistance, one human capital retention, the Post-Katrina
    Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 directed FEMA to
    develop a plan to improve the workforce, especially to fill in
    the gaps in the current workforce. A program is to be
    established or a report submitted to Congress by April 2 of
    this year, that is still not yet to be done. The rapid turnover
    continues to cause problems.
        Secondly, we need a streamlined evaluation process, for
    example, allowing local entities to hire and use licensed
    engineers or trained code enforcement officers in lieu of going
    through a lengthy and duplicative FEMA review requirement.
    Third, an alternative buildings construction requirement that
    would allow alternative projects to be funded at the full 90
    percent Federal share instead of the current 67 percent Federal
    share to encourage comprehensive community redevelopment to
    encourage alternative building instead of as many others, as
    already pointed out, simply rebuilding what was already there
    before.
        On this point, I also want to emphasize we are strongly in
    favor of legislation that would waive that 10 percent match for
    the State so the State can get back on its feet for the State
    and local entities.
        The third and final point and I will wrap up my I know my
    time has run out. The third and final point I think we need to
    recognize, the magnitude of the Katrina and Rita events as
    compared with previous disasters. I do want to applaud teams
    from HUD recently to provide longer term housing solutions
    reversing its decisions on students who were living in
    university or college-owned housing. But despite these steps,
    we have a much greater step that needs to be taken. I think
    fundamentally, the Stafford Act must distinguish between
    catastrophic and major disasters. As witnessed after Hurricanes
    Katrina and Rita, it is evident when a disaster simultaneously
    impacts thousands of square miles and virtually shuts down an
    entire--several metropolitan areas, a separate designation is
    required to adequately respond to an event of such magnitude. A
    catastrophic disaster designation should be established based
    on total populations displaced residential property damage, the
    scope of the failure of the critical infrastructure on vital
    services that allows us to adjust regulations for assistance,
    the paperwork the bureaucracy. There is precedent for such a
    designation.
        The Homeland Security Presidential Director establishes a
    national response plan that is invoked for declared incidents
    of national significance. As we rebuild the gulf coast, I
    think, that it is the most important out of my three points
    that we learned this lesson, we have a precedence for it, that
    there is a significant difference between a catastrophic
    disaster and our response should be adjusted accordingly. Thank
    you, Madam Chairwoman.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Jindal.
        Ms. Norton. Mr. Melancon, you are the last to testify.

      STATEMENT OF THE HON. CHARLIE MELANCON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                  CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

        Mr. Melancon. Thank you, Madam Chairman. I appreciate the
    opportunity to come here. I have submitted my comments for
    record. I was here earlier when Mr. Taylor and Mr. Pickering
    were giving their comments, I listened to part of Mr.
    Jefferson's and all of that of Mr. Jindal. I would suspect that
    I would probably be repetitive and to save the committee some
    time, let me just say that I concur with their remarks thus
    far. There are some items--I would be happy to stay for
    questions but in order to kind of expedite the hearing, defer
    to my other two colleagues from Louisiana. Thank you, ma'am.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Melancon. Let me ask
    all of you a question. Any ideas you have, this notion about
    fronting money up front when you have a truly catastrophic--we
    would have to define what this is. But in a--Katrina defines it
    for you. There may be something less than that, it would also
    be catastrophic. I will say to you, as I said to the last
    panel, we had all of your public officials in here ahead of
    time warning about the spending funds and how they get audited
    and all the rest of it. This notion of fronting funds is
    something that it would appear to be commonsense, except it is
    Federal funds and it is taxpayers' funds. What I think the
    committee would need, because it makes obvious sense, and the
    committee could say there could be a reserve or money that
    would be available in a catastrophic disaster and define what
    that was--well, it doesn't get you very far because if you say
    okay, here are your funds, that doesn't mean that some auditor
    isn't going to account for taxpayers' funds.
        So what we need, given that commonsense idea, is how to do
    it, and account for it, how to, you know, obviously, you
    voucher for funds for a reason and it didn't work in a
    catastrophic event. Well, I tell you why it won't work just to
    go to the other end of the spectrum. This is where you need
    truly analytical new thinking in keeping with the new kind of
    catastrophe we have experienced. I don't necessarily ask you
    off the top of your head, but that would be very useful to know
    how you could do that quickly and have the taxpayers trust you
    that you weren't just throwing money out there because you
    wanted to kind of protect yourself from kind of criticism that
    for example FEMA got last time.
        I would like to ask you all because of the role that New
    Orleans played and the revenue of the State budget, what
    condition the State budget of Louisiana is in now that this
    major part of the city--sorry, the State, oil, New Orleans and
    all of that means in revenue, what does--what is the State
    itself, what is the State itself able to do, given the fact
    that perhaps a part of the State that was most responsible for
    revenue is out of commission and has lost its tax base?
        Mr. Melancon. If I could, the State fisc at this juncture
    is in very good stead. However, it is a result of an economy
    where which if you look back at all past hurricanes and
    disaster is a booming economy, because of the rebuild and the
    construction, plus you have what is called the FEMA effect,
    everything that is being built down there now----
        Ms. Norton. That is great to hear. Has it spilled over to
    the rest of the State in your areas?
        Mr. Melancon. Well, it is not the entire State. But the
    State fisc is in good stead at this point in point in time. Is
    that an event that will continue ad infinitum? No. It will
    slowly start fading off, and unless we get some of the changes
    that have been requested and some of the legislation that we
    have passed through the House with the----
        Ms. Norton. So taxes are being paid to the State, aren't
    taxes being paid to local jurisdictions as well?
        Mr. Jefferson. I might amend that. For New Orleans--New
    Orleans didn't benefit from either the boom in buying
    materials, sheetrock and appliances and all that stuff, because
    there weren't any places to shop in New Orleans to speak of, so
    the sales tax benefits went to Baton Rouge some went to
    Jefferson Parish and other places, but none went to St. Bernard
    because there weren't any places open for business.
        So our cities have suffering dramatically and it is a loss
    in taxes. I asked a man before I came up here, how much is back
    and he said about 60 percent of the tax base is back online but
    that is just recently. It has gone up gradually. There was one
    time when it was less than 20 percent and then it just has
    moved gradually up. But the city has incredibly indebtedness
    now somewhere near $300 million trying to overcome this lack of
    taxes, and it is still not where it needs to be and won't be
    for a good long time so it is unable to pay for things and have
    it reimbursed.
        It is a mighty struggle to keep above water and to pay for
    all the things that one has to pay for, including fire and
    police and all the other things that are critical services.
        Mr. Boustany. I would just simply add that my district in
    southwest Louisiana which has a number of rural communities,
    which were quite literally wiped out those communities are
    really struggling. I think Mr. Melancon, in southeast
    Louisiana, has the same sort of situation. Small agricultural-
    based communities fishing communities which had significant
    damage their tax base has been eroded significantly by this
    event and these communities are really having a hard time.
    Waiving the State match on some of these funds that we have
    talked about earlier would be of major importance to us,
    particularly in the rural communities.
        Ms. Norton. Well, you know it is interesting the contrast
    between the State getting revenue because of the rebuilding and
    local communities New Orleans doesn't feel it, rural
    communities don't feel it. I don't understand how this works.
    At some point, there ought to be some--forgive me--trickle-down
    effect here.
        Mr. Baker. If I may add, Madam Chair, I am one of the
    beneficiary communities, Baton Rouge just north of the storm
    impact, and it is our merchants who are getting the settlements
    out of the insurance proceeds, people came into clothing stores
    and would buy entire wardrobes, housewares, building materials,
    so there has been an exchange of commerce from Mr. Jefferson's
    Orleans, Mr. Boustany's coastal Rita area, to those residual
    municipalities that did not get adversely impacted by the
    storm.
        The net effect is a spike in State sales tax because of
    these transactions which includes an awful lot of automobiles,
    but as Mr. Melancon said we believe this to be a short term
    spike, it will flatten off and Orleans to the rest of the
    State, Orleans metropolitan area represents about 30 to 35
    percent of the State's overall economic income. So this short-
    term cash in the pocket is going to lead us--in my opinion,
    into some very difficult financial times in a few years to
    come.
        Ms. Norton. Although typically the old pump the prime
    notion should mean that as building takes place throughout the
    State----
        Mr. Baker. The problem is, in this case, this storm took
    the pump, there is nothing in the ground, there is no slabs,
    there is no economic activity because we have complete
    dislocation of social order, schools, firehouses, everything is
    gone. And so, if you move back in as an individual today, you
    may be taking your own money and putting it at risk because you
    don't know if your neighbors are going to come back and
    rebuild. Therefore, your real estate value is in jeopardy. And
    that is what is stymieing the wholesale recovery, which would
    normally occur where communities are damaged but not destroyed.
    These folks were wiped out.
        Mr. Boustany. The other thing I would add, too, is that
    when you have your law enforcement functions that have really
    been devastated and damaged and understaffed and a health care
    system, which is really stressed, that also is a significant
    inhibition on recovery.
        Mr. Jindal. And Madam Chairwoman, I would add one final
    point. I agree with everything that my colleagues have said. In
    addition to these being temporary revenues, let's us also not
    forget there are some very significant obligations that haven't
    been met. For example for the State to make whole all the
    people who have been promised in the road home program could
    take billions of dollars more than allocated. In addition,
    there has not been a final decision made to how to respond to
    the destruction caused within the charity hospital system. That
    could obligate the State to be spending hundreds of millions,
    if not more, dollars.
        Third, there is a significant coastal erosion problem in
    Mr. Melancon's, and it affects all of our districts. The State
    has temporary surplus of revenues, but there are some very,
    very serious obligations, and we shouldn't forget that those
    obligations are much larger than even those temporary
    surpluses.
        Mr. Jefferson. May I make one other small point, unlike
    almost every storm we can talk about, particularly down in my
    area and Charlie's area, we are in so much trouble there and we
    were devastated because the levies broke. It was Federally
    designed, constructed and maintained levies that gave way that
    drowned the City of New Orleans, and that drowned St. Bernard
    Parish, that not having been taking place, we wouldn't be
    talking about this level of devastation. That is not true along
    the western coast of the State, but it certainly is true where
    we are. And so, I think there is a larger responsibility here
    on the part of the Federal Government to make our region whole.
        Ms. Norton. Well, I certainly agree. I begin with who pumps
    the prime--or pumps the pump, whatever, first and if you look
    at Europe, didn't need us after a while, or if you look even at
    for that matter the Great Depression, first the government
    begins to do the building the public building that is
    necessary, then everything else takes off. You can't expect the
    private sector to start rebuilding a State. You start with the
    Federal Government or with the public sector. Then, of course,
    you begin to peel off into the private sector the private
    sector then get some of that, and you begin to rebuild. And
    after a while, you look at Europe, they didn't need us for very
    long after we were in there on the ground initially. Before I
    go to more questions, I am going to move to the ranking member.
        Mr. Graves. I don't have anything.
        Ms. Norton. We have been joined by a member of the full
    committee, Ms. Brown. Ms. Brown do you have a statement before
    I continue with questions?

       STATEMENT OF THE HON. CORRINE BROWN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
                   CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

        Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida. Yes, I do, Madam Chairman.
    And I want to thank you for inviting me to come today and to
    testify about my experiences with dealing with the unresolved
    problems regarding Hurricane Katrina. And I say all the time
    that I view myself as the people in the New Orleans,
    Mississippi, Louisiana area member at large. I am very
    interested in helping them to resolve their problems. I have
    been to New Orleans seven times, and I am going again in June.
    Sadly, every time I have been there it looks like a war zone.
    It is unbelievable that 20 months have passed and the most
    basic human needs have not yet been met. 20 months later and
    residents are not able to move back.
        There is still debris everywhere and people are without
    electricity. Twenty months later, and there are impassible
    roads and no clean water, not enough teachers. Twenty months
    later, no street sign, toxic fumes in the air and not enough
    police officers. Twenty months later is unacceptable. You know,
    I am proud to be a part of the new Democratic majority and part
    of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that
    recognized that we need to fix these problems fast. It is my
    hope that my testimony and other statements from colleagues and
    some other problems that can easily be fixed and give the
    residents of Louisiana and Mississippi finally a chance to
    rebuild.
        My testimony today will highlight a few of the problems
    that I heard from residents and their families, and I think
    that can easily be fixed. The major problem is getting the
    funding to the residents. Frankly, there seems to be two
    problems, one FEMA and one the State. And what seems to be the
    problem is they don't understand that we are loading the people
    down with complicated paperwork.
        Let me give you an example. Louisiana applied for a FEMA
    hazard mitigation grant program that would fund the road
    program. FEMA denies their claim and calls a shortage of funds
    for the road home program. Now residents have to wait even
    longer to rebuild. Another FEMA problem regarding the damage
    assessment. I heard FEMA falsely assured school districts--and
    I heard this from superintendents when I was there. They
    reported in New Orleans and Mississippi, they had okayed the
    projects and the school system went out, purchased sites,
    rebuilt. And now they have not gotten the reimbursement and
    FEMA has denied them the additional funding. That is a problem
    and the problem that superintendents have told me exist. In
    addition, I went to the airport and the administration went
    with big checks, they blew up the checks. Here's the money, $25
    million or whatever, but they whispered in the ear of the
    airport directors, now you can't put it in the bank. And to
    this day, they have not gotten the funds. And so the horror
    story of the government not functioning, a government that is
    inept incompetent, that don't care.
        And so I have a list of concerns that I want to submit in
    writing. Another one is that stands out is the SBA loan
    program. Now, if you apply for the loan program and you have
    gotten assistance from another area, they take the entire lump
    sum out, wherein if you had a loan, you could pay it back over
    the period of time with small interests. That is not the case.
    I would like to thank Chairman Norton for allowing me to
    testify today and her leadership on this issue.
        I am looking forward to working with members from
    Louisiana, Mississippi, and other members from the
    Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to finally help the
    residents from the Hurricane Katrina recovery, and let me just
    close that I have adopted a family there. I brought them to
    Orlando for a week. But the key there is that I took their
    plight to the White House, letters, their casework and we were
    able to get the funding after 18 months laid out, although they
    told me they haven't received a penny; they have gotten in
    writing they would receive the money.
        One of the ladies died last Saturday and they had the
    funeral, but at least she knew that her funds was on the way,
    and the VA--I am pleased to say that we are on the right path
    as far as making sure that the funding to replace that system
    is in place. I would ask for hearings from the VA to make sure
    that we can cut down the amount of time it takes to deliver a
    hospital to the veterans in that area in particular. In the
    area of transportation and infrastructure, I am asking my
    governor to convene a conference with the governors in those
    areas so that we can have a train, economic development train,
    but also one that when we have another hurricane, and we will
    have another one, we will be able to move people out of harm's
    way. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
        Ms. Norton. Well, thank you very much, Ms. Brown, for your
    sustained interest in this part--this part of the country. I
    know that your experience in Florida has made you particularly
    conscious of the needs when an even more catastrophic event
    occurs in another State. I only have a couple questions and a
    question that really plays off of one that ranking member
    asked. But first, I would like to ask you a question, a couple
    questions that appear to have come from the City of New
    Orleans, that involve--would involve were such matters to be
    adopted a rather unusual intervention into State affairs.
    First, the city implies if a truly catastrophic event occurs,
    and we again have to define what that means, the State should
    be compelled to accept immediate needs funding. This must mean
    the State did not immediately accept such funding. I am not
    sure why, but I would like your thoughts on Federal Government
    to that extent when the State has not instantly or immediately
    accepted immediate needs funding.
        Mr. Baker. Madam Chair, I don't know that I am the right
    person to respond to the question, but I can go back to those
    opening hours of the storm's approach at the operations and
    control center in Baton Rouge where the State police and later
    the governor's operations were finally located. There was much
    disarray in those early hours, and the delay in my opinion--I
    am certainly not speaking for any other member, in bringing in
    the National Guard to help restoration of order was a
    significant impairment to our recovery capability. When
    individuals with goods and services arrived on the scene, there
    was civil disobedience of significance. And the first
    responders simply refused to go in until social order was
    restored. That cost precious days and presented you with those
    pictures of people standing on elevated interstates without
    even water to drink. That is unacceptable. I have, and remain
    an advocate of early intervention in a catastrophic environment
    where social order has been completely lost and we had no law
    enforcement on the ground to speak of, for the National Guard
    to come in and assume operational control immediately on
    stabilizing the community. All matters should be then delegated
    to the local authorities to determine the next step. This would
    be temporary but it would be immediate. The funding issue is
    something frankly that would not--expedited funding would not
    simply have mattered in the early hours of the response,
    because there was no place to deploy the money anyway.
        The first place that money was deployed was at the centers
    where people were temporarily housed and we, for a short while,
    had the $2,000 program that was given to people to help them
    get on the road and to other shelters. That did not work very
    well either. So there is great room for improvement in response
    mechanisms in those first 48 hours of a storm of this
    magnitude.
        Mr. Boustany. Madam Chair, I would agree with Mr. Baker,
    and relate my experience with this. In the immediate hours
    after Katrina, I was at the communications center for the
    largest privately owned ambulance emergency medical services
    company in the country, but it does provide the bulk of
    emergency services throughout our State of Louisiana. They had
    the only functional communications system in the State and we
    were getting real-time information from paramedics who were
    trying to get in and who were fearing for their lives in these
    early hours.
        So clearly, when you have a disaster of this magnitude, the
    logistical capability that could be brought to bear by our
    military and certainly National Guard is essential. And I had
    calls, for instance, from someone who had an armored car
    service trying to get money to ATMs to desperately help people
    in need who couldn't get in because of crime concerns. So law
    enforcement and getting order is essential in those early
    hours. It goes hand in hand with the emergency effort. And
    there was considerable chaos early on and there was very poor
    communication. In fact, the center where I was sitting and
    working with others was the only place where we had viable
    communication in the entire area.
        Ms. Norton. Mr. Jefferson, this idea appears to have come
    from the City of New Orleans. What do you have to say about it?
        Mr. Jefferson. I think the City of New Orleans is right in
    this regard. As I have said earlier, I think as a structural
    matter, the notion that the State has to be the only entity to
    be dealt with here and the State has to agree to a coordinated
    response is, to me, unrealistic. I think that if you look at
    what happened on 9/11, the Stafford Act still applied, and it
    said the money goes to the State. But the governor made a
    decision that was different than what was made at home. He
    said, we got the moneys, sent it to the mayor of the city and
    said get things fixed.
        If it works that way, it is a beautiful thing, but if it
    doesn't, if you get bottlenecking in one place or another, it
    doesn't work. So I would think that as a structural matter, if
    the devastation takes place and parish X we ought to have a
    more direct way to get things to parish X authorities, through
    the Stafford Act, rather than have it all having to go through
    the State, which requires coordination.
        Second of all, as has been pointed out, the communication
    system must be compatible. A lot of this discussion about the
    crime and lawlessness was as we found out later, it was rumored
    but nonetheless, it kept people out. I suspect some of it was
    real, but when they got through all the investigations, all the
    things about murders and all the rest of it, it turned out not
    to be so. It was a complete deterrent early on and kept people
    from not taking the risk of going down. Second thing is
    prepositioning of pretty much everything.
        I think on the public side prepositioning of the fire and
    police folks in a position where they can kind of--not be
    victims but come back and be of service is very, very important
    and have the local folks have a chance to do things.
        Second of all, contract prepositioning, we had these four
    big contracts, or five, whatever it was, came in there with no-
    bid contracts, we had no small business folks, no local people
    ready to do very much of anything. I think this whole thing has
    to anticipate that we can have the prepositioning issues done
    with local contractors and with our local first responders,
    have communication so that everybody can kind of have good
    information and be able to talk to each other through and a
    more direct way to get aid directly to the affected areas
    without having it to go through all the----
        Ms. Norton. Very sensitive issue. But again catastrophic
    funding. I will tell you one thing, by of course going through
    the usual protocol administration we should say the Federal
    Government took the rap. So if, in fact, lives are lost or
    there is civil disorder because you are going through the
    statutory protocol State, local, Federal, whenever that comes
    in, in the long run, the world will see the Federal Government
    as having not come to the aid of its own citizens. Another
    controversial perhaps notion--that a suggestion that has come
    forward to us is that FEMA should have the responsibility for
    managing and setting up, establishing some kind of national
    evacuation plan.
        I think there might be some concern about that in terms of
    homeland security, although one should see these as exactly the
    same kind of disaster, if an evacuation was necessary. What do
    you--what are your views on whether there should be such a
    thing as a national evacuation plan?
        Mr. Boustany. I don't think it should go from the top down.
    I believe there should be significant input from the governors
    and from the States and from the local communities working in
    tandem with FEMA. I know that the particularities of the
    situation on the ground and their respective locations, and I
    think evacuation plans should be worked out at the State level,
    but with some Federal input as to, you know, how to expedite
    these things and where pitfalls may come. I think if everybody
    is working together, if you prepare ahead, then there is less
    confusion when you have a problem.
        But I do believe that one of the problems we have had is we
    probably perhaps thought FEMA could do too much, and I think
    there was a lack of clarity as to what exactly FEMA's role is
    in something like this. Because clearly FEMA didn't have all
    the resources necessary. So I think there needs to be clear
    communication beforehand about proper roles and who is going to
    do what from you know the individual counties or parishes with
    their emergency personnel to the State and communicating with
    FEMA.
        Mr. Baker. Madam Chair, if I may, I would suggest--I return
    to my catastrophic risk assessment idea, coordinating all known
    available data in real-time, what is difficult for local
    officials is to say let's evacuate. You have to shut down
    businesses, inconvenience people, take kids out of school, run
    by the grocery, get the car filled up, and then don't know
    where you are going. A model that would enable all the
    available commercial and governmental data just to be visible
    on a screen where you as a person get home, you see where the
    storm is, the likely storm track. That is the weather station.
        Then you see that the hotel bookings in central Louisiana
    are beginning to fill up. That is a warning. You see that
    there's gas shortages from lake Charles going west from the
    storm track. You see that the storm is intensifying. You see
    that there is--you know there is health care problems, perhaps
    elderly being transferred from nursing homes into other
    hospital care facilities. All of those are dynamic predictors
    that convince local constituents in a way local officials
    cannot, and if there is to be another Katrina-like event in the
    New Orleans area and we don't start getting people out 3 days
    in advance, we can't get them out.
        If there is not enough contraflow to get all the vehicles
    out of that region of the State without significant advance
    warning, and the way we do it is to begin to tell people, local
    resources around the corner are being depleted, and if you
    don't leave now, you may not even be able to buy gas. People
    were stuck on the interstate as much as eight and 10 hours to
    get from New Orleans just to my city of Baton Rouge, and from
    there I had people staying at my home. I had people staying in
    my campaign headquarters.
        Everywhere you could find a place to put people you would
    put people because all the commercial assets filled up too
    quickly, and they didn't have the resources to get away in
    time. So I really think that--and that is not just for our
    committee. I think any community subject to coastal risk ought
    to have some sort of system that has all those inputs. And
    there is a lot of people that can tell us how to construct
    these things to give people the judgment and skills they need.
        Mr. Baker. And that goes, as opposed to a national plan
    that is static in form, that has a rule book. I think the
    dynamics of these things are so unpredictable we need something
    that is real-time.
        Mr. Boustany. I would agree with that and, first, it is one
    of the problems we had was finding hospital beds, and we ended
    up using that communication center I mentioned on an ad hoc
    basis, getting information about where people were coming from
    and making phone calls to get real-time information about where
    to transfer hospital patients from one damaged or flooded
    hospital to where hospital beds were available, and this was
    going not only statewide but actually outside of the State of
    Louisiana. And it was sort of an ad hoc "from the ground up"
    type of effort, and I think Federal Emergency Management Agency
    can provide oversight for when you have, for instance, a
    disaster beyond just a county, where you are involving multiple
    counties, then FEMA can provide sort of the coordination. But
    you have to have the communication, real-time communication, to
    really make this work.
        Mr. Jefferson. Let me say one thing. I think at the end of
    the day in New Orleans, if you are going to test if the
    evacuation worked based on who was left in town, I will give
    you an idea of what I think happened. First responders were
    left there because they had to be. They were asked to stay,
    they were trying to be helpful, whether they were pumping
    water--fire, police. Some of those folks were left and trapped
    in town. The folks who were infirm, who were in nursing
    facilities and who were in senior citizen facilities and all
    the rest of it, people who were dependent on other people to
    move them and who could not make a decision on their own were
    also left. Hospitals--folks in hospitals were left and
    abandoned. Our tourists were stuck there who were in hotels and
    all the rest. And, finally, poor people. Really poor folks were
    left there because they didn't have any way to get out of town.
    They had no cars. They had no money. They had no whatever. So
    in those five categories that is why we had folks left in the
    city.
        Now, part of the responsibility lays on the part of the
    Federal Government for not, for example, helping the city plan.
    Part of it was on the city. All of them didn't do it right.
    None of them participated in all these issues and none of them
    did it correctly.
        We had an exercise here called Hurricane Pam which was a
    FEMA-orchestrated worst-case scenario storm in New Orleans. And
    they anticipated many of these things, but didn't do anything
    about it. And so one of the big deals is to actually--if you
    are going to do a Hurricane Pam kind of an event as a
    simulation, then do all the things that you know can work in
    that sort of storm.
        I do not believe the Federal Government would be in charge
    of the evacuation plan and all of that. I think they ought to
    be big partners in this. They have many more resources--we have
    many more resources here on this level than the States or local
    governments ever had, so there must be coordination in the use
    of them. But I do think they can provide a lot of technical
    help in planning, because as Richard points out, there are
    facilities all over the country that can be used in the case--
    as it were in this case--that folks weren't prepared to
    provide.
        They also are first responders all over the country that
    were made available to help, ere ours actually are
    overwhelmingly becoming, themselves, victims. But there are
    different remedies to be applied to folks who are tourists who
    are there trapped in hotels, people who are too poor to find
    their way out of town, folks in hospitals and therefore
    dependent on others, older people who are infirm, and those who
    are first responders who had to stay and try to rescue. So each
    required a different approach to dealing with it.
        Ms. Norton. I appreciate your input on that. The notion
    about real-time evacuation and how to make sure that is
    coordinated, I take that question. What I think is left out of
    your analysis is that if you are evacuating, you are evacuating
    to someplace else. You are evacuating to somebody else's State.
    You don't have jurisdiction in somebody else's State. Only the
    Federal Government has that kind of jurisdiction. There is one
    thing to say, as I think you probably say, again we are
    learning from Katrina. And Katrina was just about getting
    people to go someplace, anywhere, quick. Okay, we got that.
        A national evacuation plan would have to prepare Texas,
    would have to prepare other States around, to understand they
    may receive people. Might even--might even decide where people
    from one part of the State might go, or cities in--Baton Rouge
    took a huge number of people from New Orleans--might even make
    arrangements ahead of time on a temporary basis.
        We can talk about Katrina all we want to. If there is a
    catastrophic terrorist event where, in addition to knowing
    somehow that the floods would recede, you are left with not
    knowing where the terrorist event came from or what to do, it
    will certainly not be enough to say to the Governor of the
    Stat, Why didn't you evacuate people?
        If it is a nuclear device, evacuating people, for example,
    in the direction of where the nuclear residue is coming from
    would be further catastrophe.
        I am struggling with this. This is for very good reason
    these matters have been State matters. But, you know, this is
    the 21st century now. And this is global terrorism. This is,
    yes, Katrina writ large.
        Mr. Baker. Madam Chair, if I may suggest----
        Ms. Norton. But I need you to think about, particularly in
    light of the confusion that developed around going through the
    protocols, about the timing it takes to go through the
    protocols, and about the terrible effect on other people who
    are still feeling that effect in surrounding States, but have
    simply acted like good Americans and have absorbed the effect.
        Now, it is one thing to absorb the effect from people who
    come in relatively healthy. It is another thing to absorb the
    effect of people coming in contaminated with something that has
    gone off in their area. It is the failure to think of the next
    catastrophe that bothers me about Katrina, because I am not
    sure that another Katrina will occur for some time to come. But
    given what has happened in global warming, the unpredictability
    of--we have tornadoes in Florida now, and the rest. I am very
    worried about our overlearning----
        Mr. Baker. Madam Chair----
        Ms. Norton. --certain kinds of mistakes and not moving, not
    moving forward as a result.
        I am hearing him. I am going to finish saying what I am
    saying and then I am going to call on him.
        This is an issue of some concern, takes very deep thinking
    and analysis incorporating what we have learned, trying to
    imagine what is unimaginable, and bearing in mind that just as
    the State took the rap for evacuation, there is still
    controversy about whether or not there was some Federal role to
    be played there. And the next event may present an entirely new
    circumstance. And I hear very little to help me think as a
    Federal official how to deal with that.
        Now, Mr. Baker.
        Mr. Baker. Thank you, very much, Madam Chair.
        I would merely point out that in the early hours of any
    type of catastrophe, principally the hurricane we experienced,
    but almost any catastrophe, there is of necessary consequence a
    local decisionmaking-driven process. And the system I am
    encouraging to be promoted is advisory in nature, not
    mandatory, in that you give people information. Some will use
    it. We know some won't. Some will adamantly refuse to leave.
        Ms. Norton. I understand that and I accept that. That is an
    important contribution. I am talking about some kind of
    framework that--for example, here in the District of Columbia,
    where, by the way, 200,000 Federal employees that come in and
    go out, they don't even live here.
        The first thing we have learned is, hey, evacuate. Well,
    that builds human catastrophe of unspeakable proportions on
    what is likely to be a rather small event that happens in one
    part. But that is what everybody thinks now. They think you
    ought to evacuate.
        I will tell you one thing. There is no way to get out of
    this city and there is no place to go. And I don't think
    Maryland or Virginia has the answer to that.
        Mr. Baker. My point merely was that our citizens went to
    concentrated points of relief and thousands were in temporary
    shelters for about a 3-month period. Those are the people that
    then later located out of our State to our great neighbors in
    Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
        So it is a staged event. If the----
        Ms. Norton. And I am suggesting, again, it may not be a
    staged event next time. The thing may be get out of Dodge, get
    as far from your State as possible. I am not asking for off-
    the-cuff answers. I am asking for us to imagine whether people
    are going to be in the State, anywhere near the State, given
    certain kinds of catastrophic events. I understand how it
    happened there, how it peeled off. People just wanted to get
    out of the flood area then.
        But I am trying to force us to think about an event of the
    kind Katrina was, an event we couldn't possibly imagine.
        Mr. Jefferson.
        Mr. Jefferson. I think that you have challenged, at least
    me, beyond my capacity to respond fully to you. But I do want
    to say this much. There are a lot of places in Louisiana that
    could have accommodated our people if we had thought about this
    thing earlier. In other words, we don't have to really
    necessarily involve other States. We are dealing with the
    southern Louisiana phenomenon. It could be Shreveport, Monroe,
    Alexandria. We could have places up there that people could go.
        Ms. Norton. Do you think they spread out rather evenly and
    well----
        Mr. Jefferson. What happened was people make their first
    decisions themselves as to where they would go. If you know
    somebody in Alexandria, you went there----
        Ms. Norton. Right, if you have relatives there.
        Mr. Jefferson. Right. Then go to Atlanta or Texas, whether
    there was a hotel room, whether they thought they were coming
    back home in 3 days. Nobody thought about this thing as a 2-
    year event--is what it has turned out to be--and beyond that
    now in the next few weeks. So it is certainly something we
    hadn't thought through.
        The challenge you are presenting to us is let's stop and
    think this through, because if it happened once it can happen
    again, maybe not in the form of a hurricane, maybe some other
    form.
        I am not prepared to provide an answer, but I can tell you
    there are ways we can look at this that can involve some
    Federal assistance helping us to make these plans and some
    Federal resource allocations that can help us do things,
    perhaps in our own State, that can end up with a different
    result from what we faced here.
        Mr. Boustany. Madam Chair, I would just add something. I
    believe you have to look at the scale of these different events
    from perhaps a small localized event all the way to a major
    catastrophic event involving multiple States, multiple
    communities. And I think a way to approach this is to have
    mayors talking to the regional mayors to have cooperative
    agreements, have the Governors of the respective States having
    an overall umbrella plan for the State, and then perhaps a
    Governor of a State talking to contiguous States with
    cooperative agreements.
        We did this in southwest Louisiana with our mayors, to
    allocate resources in the immediate chaos after Hurricane Rita,
    and it worked very well. In fact, we bypassed the chaos in
    Baton Rouge where everything was bottle-necked. Every request
    had to go through Baton Rouge. It took hours, and sometimes
    days, to get things. We found alternative ways to get
    supplies--gasoline, diesel and so forth, medical supplies--by
    having this sort of cooperative arrangement.
        I think FEMA with its regional offices should be actively
    engaged with the States and the local communities before these
    events so that they can kind of model out what happened after a
    particular event. If we do that, we will have a proper system
    in place and that is----
        Ms. Norton. That is the kind of thinking I am talking
    about. Yes go ahead.
        Mr. Boustany. I think the final point I would make is that
    there has to be a trigger for when a Federal response occurs.
    We saw an interminable delay after Hurricane Katrina in the New
    Orleans area before we saw the full mobilization of a Federal
    response. And when that Federal response began, it was a thing
    of beauty. It worked very well in the immediate recovery--or
    immediate response stage, I should say.
        What is that trigger point? Particularly if a Governor is
    sort of--if a Governor is incapacitated or paralyzed by the
    situation, indecisive, at what point does the Federal
    Government move in? This is a real problem after Katrina and I
    submit to you it is not a problem we have solved yet, and it is
    something we need to address here at the Federal level.
        Ms. Norton. Mr. Boustany, I think there is Federal
    authority to require the States to gather together and work out
    the kind of regional understanding that you--here you wouldn't
    have the Federal Government for doing it. What does the Federal
    Government know to do for, for example, in this region? They
    would have to say look, Maryland, D.C, and Virginia, you figure
    out what would happen if there was an evacuation. In fact, the
    most important thing we would have to figure out is how to make
    people stay in place, because we are less likely to have a
    flood or a natural disaster than we are to have a terrorist
    event.
        What Mr. Jefferson said, I think, is driven home by a 2-
    year event. Mr. Baker said, first, people came to points nearby
    and then they fanned out into other places; because as Mr.
    Jefferson said, no one thought it would be a 2-year event.
        I give you this, gentlemen. Every time thus far that we
    have passed a piece of legislation, the 10 percent--I think--
    matching, each time those States have come in and said, "me
    too." and you know what? Each time we have done so--when Texas
    comes in, when Florida comes in, and says as a result of
    Katrina--Arkansas in particular--each time we felt we had to do
    this. But notice how we have had to do it. We have had to do it
    on an ad hoc basis because the Stafford Act does not take into
    account the effect on the States, surrounding States, and, for
    that matter, other localities. That is dangerous. We do have
    freedom of movement across this country. But, particularly if
    we have certain kinds of catastrophic events, if in fact the
    States believe that a whole hoard of people were going to come
    in from another State, and give you a 50 percent increase in
    people attending your schools and in people who want your State
    legislature to come up with the State share of Medicaid, and
    with people who wanted food stamps, with your legislature to do
    it, I would tell you I would hate to see what would happen to
    the normal generosity of the American people.
        So I think we have to look at--and I appreciate the notion
    of the States getting together. The Federal Government could
    say, "whatever you decide," but could require that the States
    in the regional configurations where they usually operate in
    this area--I know exactly what those configurations are. They
    are Montgomery County, Fairfax, the District of Columbia. I
    mean, I know exactly where they are. So we wouldn't be
    inventing anything new.
        I suspect that, depending on where you are in Louisiana,
    you work more closely with Arkansas, with Texas, or with
    whoever it is.
        Just let me finally say to Mr. Graves, do you have any
    further questions?
        We held this hearing because we did not believe that the
    committee was in a position to know what should be done in the
    nature of what we are anticipating doing. We intend to put
    together a set of legislative fixes. These fixes would pertain
    to your areas alone. They would say to FEMA, this is--perhaps
    some of them will have time limitations. They will all relate
    to Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.
        Any further information you have would be what is most
    useful to us. None of us have experienced what you have
    experienced. Your constituents do not come to us, they come to
    you. So I invite you, in addition to the very helpful testimony
    you presented today, to keep it coming to us as we prepare the
    legislative fixes that are now--that your testimony has is
    already suggested.
        Ms. Corrine Brown of Florida. Madam Chairman, I have a
    question. But let me just say, like quickly, that the FEMA that
    you all experienced is not the FEMA that we dealt with in
    Florida and I really--you know, one of the things, we did a lot
    of reorganization after 9/11, and I don't think all of it was
    good. Because how we changed the role and scope of FEMA, first
    of all, the Wall Street Journal printed an article--or New York
    Times--with 20 top physicians. Not one of the 20 top had any
    disaster experience.
        Now, I don't know how far we should go as legislators to
    say what it is as far as job description. I don't feel that we
    have to do that. But the point is you can't appoint your
    friends in life-and-death situations.
        As we move forward, we need to figure out the role of Red
    Cross. They go into the community--as you think of the bigger
    picture--they go into the community and they have contracts;
    but what process do they use to include the local businesses in
    even delivery of food, or contracts, working with them?
        First responders came into the area. They came from--I know
    they came from Jacksonville. We sent 16 tractor-trailers, but
    the first responders in many areas weren't permitted, Madam
    Chairman, to go into the community, because FEMA didn't certify
    them or something. We talking about physicians. We talking
    about doctors that was practicing in emergency rooms. We
    talking about firefighters that was there playing ball, because
    they was not permitted to come into the area. Not that they
    didn't want to come, they was not permitted to come.
        So we have--just last Sunday I met a young lady in a
    nursing home--and we need to have plans not just for the New
    Orleans area, but period. It should be a national program so
    that when people go into nursing homes and they didn't have the
    supplies, the family did not know what people in various
    nursing homes was taken to. So we have got a lot of work and it
    is interesting. This was a national disaster, what you are
    seeing. But what if someone was constantly attacking us? That
    would be a major problem.
        Now, one other thing. The ships in the area--a lot of
    captains call me, there are ships that are available that could
    be brought in, we could have carried a lot of the supplies, but
    we didn't even call them up. And many of the Navy people called
    me and many of the captains saying they have always been sent
    to other countries. How come, when we had a natural disaster in
    our country, we didn't utilize their services?
        So it needs to be more working together with the various
    agencies, and perhaps the role of FEMA is a lot bigger than
    just FEMA.
        Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Ms. Brown.
        On the matter of the qualifications of the top officials
    with FEMA today, the committee has asked for an audit of the
    qualifications of all of those officials, because we want to
    make sure we don't have another Brownie situation. And there
    have been complaints that although some of these people are
    military, they do not have disaster experience.
        I want to thank the Members again for really very helpful
    testimony and urge you to keep it coming to us as we prepare
    our own bill.
        The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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