Not to brag, but you heard it here first. Back in November, The Forum did a story on Monsignor Alfred LoPinto’s appointment as CEO of Catholic Charities. In the interview we conducted, the Monsignor called FEMA’s attempt to recoup disaster relief funds doled out after Superstorm Sandy “absurd” and suggested, even, that elderly people on fixed incomes should simply refuse to pay back money already spent.
“Let them make an effort to take the house,” he told us, adding that the agency is “callous” to even suggest the money be returned.
This got us thinking: if a mild-mannered, diplomatic person like the Monsignor feels so strongly, then things must be pretty bad. The editorial that week was a bit controversial, at least in our office. It ended by telling FEMA where to go. We know the agency has done a lot of good for a lot of people, but having spoken to South Queens residents who’d been affected by FEMA’s recoupment efforts, we were angry. It had taken many people by storm — no pun intended –, as they’d already long ago spent the relief money to fix damage done by the hurricane.
A few weeks later, we were working on the “Year in Review” editorial, and we stumbled on some information on the growing number of court cases resulting from Sandy victims who were finding that FEMA-governed insurance companies and engineering firms had been changing initial flood damage reports to reduce payouts. The first reports would typically indicate severe damage due to flooding from Sandy, and later reports would call it “soil erosion” or “settling.”
Then, about a month after that, we learned that legislators had wrangled FEMA to cancel the debt of elderly residents of Belle Harbor Manor – government “debt” that shouldn’t have existed in the first place, had FEMA done its audit on the front end of handling these relief cases. Again, we are all for reducing waste, fraud, and abuse, but to attempt to do so to the detriment of Sandy victims legally entitled to disaster assistance, particularly those who are elderly or on fixed incomes, is plain wrong.
Last week we reported that Senators had announced the Disaster Assistance Recoupment Fairness Act of 2015, to prevent other disaster relief recipients like those at Belle Harbor Manor from being unjustly indebted to FEMA.
And so we arrive at present day, and a top executive at FEMA’s Insurance Program has just admitted that insurance companies and engineering companies that they oversee have indeed been falsifying flood damage reports and hiring unlicensed engineers to conduct the assessments.
FEMA’s executive says that he’s not aware of evidence that the agency was giving the directive to change the reports, but he did acknowledge that they had known about the disputed cases, and thus the “signals” of fraud, for over a year. Our legislators are again fighting to get FEMA to rectify the situation, announcing within hours of press time that they are urging the agency to apply settlements to all policy holders, not just those who filed lawsuits. But, says FEMA, the settlements probably won’t satisfy all Sandy victims, since the program “wasn’t designed to make everyone whole.” A sarcastic voice in our ear says, “Big shocker.”
But what else can we say? We warned you.
