When it comes to payouts for damaged property, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has had a busy week, first rolling out a new arbitration process for Gulf Coast Recovery claims and then proposing a new rule on replacing repetitively damaged properties.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week announced the creation of a new arbitration process to resolve Hurricane Rita and Katrina public assistance disputes involving more than $500,000. The three-member review panels—which are not affiliated with DHS—will be set to accept requests to settle disputes at the end of the month.
“This new arbitration process will provide an independent alternative review, critical to achieving final resolution of remaining disputes,” Napolitano stated in a FEMA news release. “These procedures are fair, but they’re aggressive. We want to move these things along, so we have set targeted deadlines for how the arbitration process will work.”
In most cases, panel decisions—which are final and binding—should be reached within 60 days of panel review, according to FEMA.
Arbitrators are likely to be busy in the early stages of the program. The State of Louisiana, for instance, currently has 30 pending appeals, including a long-running stalemate over Charity Hospital, according the Times-Picayune. The state has lobbied for a FEMA payout of nearly $500 million to replace the iconic hospital, which it claims is beyond repair. FEMA—which has offered to settle the score at $150 million—has held that not all of Charity’s damage is Katrina-related.
FEMA might be able to avoid similar disputes in the future, if a proposed rule against providing public assistance to repetitively damaged buildings is put into effect. The rule, listed in the Federal Register Wednesday, would reduce Disaster Mitigation Act funds available to facilities damaged by the same type of event more than three times over 10 years.
At present, FEMA provides 75 percent of replacement costs. If the rule passes, repetitively damaged buildings would receive only 25 percent, offering incentive for mitigating future disaster damage.
Jolie Breeden is the lead editor and science communicator for Natural Hazards Center publications. She writes and edits for Research Counts; the Quick Response, Mitigation Matters, Public Health, and Weather Ready Research Award report series; as well as for special projects and publications. Breeden graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.