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New Items
v The Incredible Saga of Secrecy, Public
Documents, and the Louisiana Recovery Authority (LRA)
Ø The founder of CHAT, Melanie Ehrlich,
will describe her attempt to obtain public documents about Road Home Program
(RH) rules, expenditures, and surveys of applicants
Ø The requests were directed to the LRA,
which has oversight of the RH
Ø This attempt to get some transparency
in the RH involved the Louisiana Public Records Request law
Ø It took one-and-a-half years from July
1, 2008 to Dec. 20, 2009
Ø
It
required filing a legal complaint (Ehrlich vs. Rainwater) on March 31, 2009 and nine additional months of legal
negotiations to get most of the documents
·
Click here to see the legal complaint
Ø
Here
is a brief chronology of the public requests that I made for which I had to
file for a hearing about LRA violating the Louisiana public records request law
·
My
public records request of July 1, 2008 was only partially filled
·
My
public records request of Oct. 20, 2008 was not filled at all, as of Mar. 2009,
when my lawyer started to write to LRA about a legal hearing
·
My
public records request of Dec. 15, 2008 was not filled at all as of Mar. 2009
Ø Chapter 1:
First letter from my lawyer mentioning the
need to file a legal action
·
This
letter was sent on Mar. 12, 2009 to Dan Rees, LRA attorney
·
It
describes LRA not releasing documents that detail new policy changes affecting
applicants
·
I
was told by my attorney that any policy changes to state procedure were
supposed to be made publicly automatically
·
Instead,
LRA and the similar state agency Office of Community Development (OCD)
§ kept many of the rule changes for Road Home
secret
§ hid important details about most rule
changes from the public
ð
until
CHAT obtained the Change-Policy or CCB documents by public records requests
ð
For records requests for
change-policy documents filled in 2007, see http://www.chatushome.com:2500/chatus/published/HomePage#changepolicy
·
Assurances
were from Paul Rainwater, then LRA Executive Director and Custodian of LRA
records
·
Mr. Rainwater provided unfilled promises of
compliance on
·
Aug.
11, 2008 (mentions overdue response to my July 1, 2008 request for documents, including
documents describing major policy changes in the RH)
·
Oct.
17, 2008
·
Oct.
20, 2008
·
Dec.
18, 2008
·
Dec.
30, 2008
·
Feb.
25, 2009
Ø Chapter 3, Part1:
Documents
provided by the in-house LRA attorney, Dan Rees, on Mar. 2, 2009
·
These were the first documents provided by LRA
after notification that we would have to file for a court hearing because LRA
was ignoring my record requests for many months
·
Mr. Rees sent a letter on Mar. 2, 2009
to my lawyer with some of the missing
documents requested on Oct. 20, 2008
·
His
letter addressed none of the many missing documents from my records request on
July 1, 2008
·
Still
I had received none of the documents requested on Dec. 15, 2008 and the letter
did not even mention those requests
o
The
State Appeal Panel is the final appeals that LRA allows applicants
o
Mr.
Rainwater and Mr. Rees failed to provide what was clearly requested, guidelines
& procedures for the State Appeals Panel
o “Provide any and all policy, guideline, and procedure documents given to members of the State Review Panel, appeals advisors, and PALs for resolving dispute or appeals issues.”
Ø So LRA was still withholding a document
with rules for how to decide applicants’ appeals about mistakes in their grants
·
They were thereby keeping secret whether shortchanging grant
calculation mistakes were considered with consistent or fair methods by State
staff
·
These mistakes averaged over $25,000 per applicant for ~7,500
applicants who managed to win appeals (see
road2la.com, pipeline reports)
·
Was
there a vote by the State Appeals Panel to decide an appeal?
·
Did
it have to be unanimous for an appeal to be granted?
· What were the guidelines for weighing
applicant evidence vs. evidence from the
notoriously mistake-prone contractor, ICF International?
Ø Chapter 3, Part 2: More
State Secrets From Mr. Rees’ Mar. 2, 2009 Letter-- Who Is On the State Appeals
Panel & Applicant Documentation of
Mistakes
The State Appeals Panel is supposed to “include at least
6 panelists with the state and adhoc members from the legislature.”
·
According
to LRA (and contrary to state law), applicants have no right to go to court, so
this panel is supposedly the last body who could review claims by applicants of
RH mistakes or even misdeeds
·
When
I requested the names of the Panel members (in July 1, 2008), Mr. Rees finally
responded on Mar. 2, 2009 that
§ “It is not appropriate to be disseminating
the personal information of non-management personal.”
§ And, no, he wrote, state legislators
(who at least would have provided some element of impartiality to the state-run
appeals) had not been on the appeal panels (contrary to LRA rules)
·
No
rules were provided about what kinds of documents applicants should provide
during state appeals
·
Documents,
including photos of damage that had since been repaired, were often rejected by
staff from the RH contractor
·
Applicants seem to have been rarely, if ever,
asked to give specific documents during State Review Panel proceedings
·
In
fact, sometimes applicants told us that State appeals were decided so fast, “it
would make your head spin” and other times their cases languished for many
months, as if in limbo
Ø
So the State Appeals for RH, which were decided in the applicants’
favor only 6% of the time, were conducted by individuals whose identity was
hidden from the public (even after a records request was filed) and the Panel
used secret rules or no rules to arrive at their conclusions
Ø Recently, LONG AFTER HER STATE APPEAL
WAS DENIED, an applicant was told that she should have hired an appraiser to
document a mistake in RH’s determination of the square footage of her house
even though she previously provided three other forms of documentation to
correct that mistake
·
This
applicant, like many others, had SBA or municipal documentation correcting RH
mistakes but this was ignored by the Appeals Board
·
Many
applicants with obviously mistaken RH damage assessments had originally been
told by RH staff that they had more than 50% damage but, later, had their
damage assessments & grants reduced
·
This
50% damage threshold was a critical determinant of grant size
Ø Who were the lucky applicants who
managed to win State Appeals?
·
One
lawyer, who wrote a very long and detailed legal-type document won his appeal
about a damage assessment that violated RH rules
·
One
elderly mother whose lawyer-son hired a surveyor to document that her
single-story New Orleans home, which stewed in 9 feet of filthy water, really
did have more than 50% damage
§ He hired the surveyor because he had
been told that applicants appealing wrong damage assessments hardly ever win
appeals
Ø Wrong damage estimates that
deprived applicants of their rightful grants according to RH rules were the
most frequent source of denied appeals, as a RH official told us and ICF
staffers confirmed
§ But Paul Rainwater, former Exec. Dir.
of LRA and now in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s inner staff, repeatedly argued that
Charity Hospital with 20 stories, a flooded basement, and 3 ft of water in the
first floor was more than 50% damaged by
Hurricane Katrina so that FEMA would give the state more money
§ But, falsely and hurtfully
to human victims of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Rainwater would not reverse RH decisions
that outrageously called one- and two-story New Orleans & St. Bernard homes
with 5-12 feet of water less than 50% damaged
v
Recent
CHAT Newsletters:
HMGP
News from LRA, News from Applicants
FEMA
documents about mitigation grants
(complicated
stuff; difficult to get clarification from Road Home; see above newsletter for
the link to Road Home information NOT at the RH site, but at the LRA site)
·
Natl.
Flood Insurance Booklet
·
Mitigation
reconstruction guidance
·
Reconstruction
Grant Unit Cost Guidance
o Note the word “guidance”
o Reconstruction grants refer to those who
demolish their hurricane/flood-ruined home and rebuilt
Including Important Newspaper
Article About Frank Silvestri, CHAT Co-Chair & About Denial of Assess to
Court for RH Applicants
Chapter
1-Records Requests Of LRA & More HMGP House Elevation Grant Problems
v See our CHAT Blog for news: http://www.chatushome.com/blog/?p=64
v
The Project on Government Oversight, an independent nonprofit
that investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct in order to achieve
a more effective and accountable, open and ethical government, has posted at
its blog an article entitled
v “The Far Too Long and Winding Road
Home Program”
v To read or comment at the Blog,
see http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2009/09/the-far-too-long-and-winding-road-home-program.html
v Their blog posting was done after an investigator from the Wash.
D.C.-based organization studied CHAT documents, including:
v CHAT’s complaint to the HUD Inspector General
v CHAT survey information from hundreds of applicants
v Summaries of reports and documents with links to the originals
v To
read the complete responses to CHAT’s third survey of Road Home (RH)
applicants, click here
v The survey has been made anonymous for the public but all these respondents supplied contact information
v CHAT
has more than 1550 responses to our online surveys
v To read the CHAT complaint to the HUD Office of the
Inspector General (HUD OIG) Accepted for Audit in February Click
here
·
It is about inconsistent treatment that
shortchanged applicants to the Road Home Program (RHP) for homeowners
·
The applicants were victims of
Hurricanes Katrina or Rita in Louisiana in the summer of 2005
Ø The
complaint addresses
· serious mismanagement and waste of
taxpayer money with evidence of fraud
· It seeks use of the remaining $1.5 billion in
the homeowners’ RHP for applicants who have been
o unfairly
shortchanged in their grants or denied grants because of inconsistent
application of rules
Ø Unfairly treated
applicants include the following.
Road Home Program applicants who were:
o estimated cost of damage,
o the subtraction of insurance or FEMA benefits when they were not for structural damage,
o the pre-storm value that you were not able to appeal;
o about denial of a grant that you can prove you should get according their rules,
o about still waiting for an elevation grant that you can prove you should get according their rules,
o promised funds won on appeal,
o
about a mistake that RH made in the calculation of the applicant’s
grant.
To tell
us your current situation with the Road Home Program, take CHAT’s online applicant survey: (click
here)
v
HUD’s Rule of Maximum Feasible
Deference: LRA and OCD explanations are contradicted
·
http://fhasecure.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/library/stateguide/appg.pdf
24
CFR 570.480 (c) of the State CDBG regulations provides that the Secretary will
give maximum feasible
·
deference
to the state’s interpretation of the statutory requirements and the
requirements of this regulation, provided that these interpretations are not plainly
inconsistent with the HCDA and the Secretary’s obligation to enforce compliance
with the intent of Congress contained in the Act.”
·
The
general meaning is that for HUD CDBG-funded programs (like the Road Home, RH)
the State has very much freedom to set the rules as it sees fit.
·
A
specific application is to the rule that if an applicant gives RH an appraisal
that is more than 20% higher than the pre-storm value (PSV) used for grant
calculation, RH will not accept it. This detailed requirement could not have
come from HUD according to the “maximum feasible deference” regulation.
·
This
20% rule was changed on Nov. 9, 2007 after much advocacy by CHAT. The new rule
(# 188G) was that instead of rejecting the appraisal out of hand, RH would do
an evaluation of how good the appraisal was by another appraisal called a field
review appraisal, also done by certified appraisers but arranged by ICF.
·
Here
are the problems associated with this 20% rule.
1. LRA and OCD (RH state agencies, Louisiana
Recovery Authority and Office of Community Development) told us in meetings
first that OCD decided on 20% themselves (and Mike Spletto, formerly head of
Housing for OCD) said the number could have been 5%, 10%, or 20% and he thought
they were generous to choose 20%).
o
LRA
later told us that HUD requires this 20% cutoff and told the Times-Picayune
that HUD gave “guidance” about this 20% rule. http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/07/rule_changes_frustrate_road_ho.html
o
OCD
told state legislators that “HUD allows approximately 20% over the highest
valid pre-storm value to be paid to homeowners” … exceeding the 20% allowance
…would not be eligible for CDBG funds.”
The
legislative fiscal note to a Road Home reform bill http://www.legis.state.la.us/billdata/streamdocument.asp?did=497732
o
Quite
a different statement was made by Mike Spletto, former head of Housing at OCD
during a Louisiana Legislative Subcommittee at a Town Hall meeting on RH on
Feb. 6, 2008 .
On
p. 17 of the official minutes available from the Municipal Affairs Committee of
the Louisiana Senate, the following was written
(emphasis added).
“Ms. Elkins said there
have been about three policy changes on appraisals and asked Mr. Spletto to go
over the most recent one. Mr. Spletto
responded, "As you heard earlier, a lot of the complaints were that when a
homeowner provided an appraisal, a post-storm pre-value appraisal greater than
twenty percent, the comment was that we just ignored it. The state had us set up a policy that twenty percent was a number
that we could accept a non arms length transaction.”
2. LRA said that it has two letters from HUD indicating that 20% is the highest deviation that they would consider acceptable. With considerable difficulty, I