A Recovery For The Rich?
by Adam Lynch
Photo by Darren Schwindaman
September 12, 2007
Thanks to Gov. Haley Barbour, federal Hurricane Katrina recovery money is benefiting the rich on the Mississippi Gulf Coast more than the poor, advocates for low- and moderate-income housing say. "We're finding that federal disbursements are not balanced among high- and low-income people," said Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP.
The government awarded $5.5 billion to the state of Mississippi to assist with its recuperation from Hurricane Katrina, but only a fraction of that money is going toward the construction of small rental units and public housing, which most commonly benefit low- to low-middle class incomes.
Reports devised by the Steps Coalition, the Mississippi Center for Justice and the National Low Income Housing Coalition say the state, led by Gov. Haley Barbour, has been steering money toward higher-income brackets through federal waivers over Community Development Block Grant Disaster Supplemental funds.
Federal CDBG regulations demand that 50 percent of CDBG money go to housing benefiting low- to moderate-income brackets, but the state received waivers of low-moderate-income participation requirements on $4.1 billion, or 80 percent of all federal hurricane recovery funds allocated so far. "The governor's office lobbied for that waiver very specifically," Johnson said.
The result? Almost all the federally backed state-funded recovery efforts have focused on homeownership, about 10 times the amount allocated to replacing rental units or public housing. Specifically, federally approved state hurricane recovery allocations are $367,500,000 for rental units versus $3,260,000,000 for home-ownership programs, according to the NAACP report, "The Accountability Gap: Unanswered Questions Two Years Later."
The impact is felt all over the Coast, with rental rates jumping more than 30 percent in the region, and some Biloxi employees having to drive more than 60 miles to find their rental units further inland.
Johnson complains that not only has labor suffered along the Coast, but the skewed allotment favors the profit of private contractors over the coffers of municipalities. "The other thing the state took out, which nobody talks about, was a benefit for what's called entitlement cities," Johnson said.
Mississippi has only a handful of entitlement cities, including Biloxi, Gulfport and Jackson. The designation would normally have allowed city administration to directly tap the federal funds, allowing municipalities to handle their own recovery repairs—and spend up to 5 percent of the money for administrative purposes.
"Instead, that money went to companies such as The Reznick Group (of Maryland)," Johnson said. Reznick received $88 million to implement the Mississippi Homeowner Assistance Grant program. Other advocates, like the Steps Coalition, say the Mississippi Development Authority offers little to no information regarding state expenditures for the Coast's labor class and specifies no expenditures dedicated to low- or moderate-income projects.
Gov. Barbour, in contrast, has complete oversight of the federal disbursements through the Mississippi Development Authority, an organization ultimately presided over by the governor, who picks its leaders. Legislators, like Democrat Rep. Frances Fredricks, of hurricane-devastated Gulfport, grew leery of the governor's authority over the disbursements, and attempted to pass HB 1320, which allowed legislative input. A majority of House members joined her call, though the Senate—controlled by Barbour—killed the bill.
"I authored that bill in the House, but that bill died in the Senate, killed by Sens. Scottie Cuevas (D-Pass Christian) and Tommy Gollott (R-Biloxi)," Fredricks said. "We needed more oversight because we were afraid that the governor's control over the (disbursement) would be unbalanced, even then. Now, it doesn't seem that renters get much in any category. The owners of rental property aren't receiving a lot, and the people who rent it, of course, get little to nothing, so these people are largely left out."
Even now, Cuevas may be benefiting from his role in the bill's death. Hinds County Republican Party Chairman Pete Perry, whose son works for Barbour, served Cuevas last month, overseeing a ballot-box inspection that could undermine Cuevas' narrow, 36-vote loss to challenger David Baria.
Oddly, Barbour fought to obliterate the CDBG sunshine legislation, even while using the argument of accountability as his weapon for tearing down the Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, which aimed to reduce tobacco use in the state, that same year.
"We stood behind HB 1320 because Barbour himself was crying for accountability in his attack on the Partnership," said Rep. Diane Peranich, D-Pass Christian. "There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth that $20 million was being spent on tobacco cessation. (Barbour's) bone of contention was that there was no legislative oversight on that $20 million to the Partnership. Now weigh that, if you will, against the billions of dollars coming in from the federal government, to which he wanted no oversight whatsoever. The sheer hypocrisy astounded us."
Critics charged Barbour with using his apparent power over the federal disbursements to manipulate votes in the Senate.
Rep. Jamie Franks, D-Mooreville, accused the governor of influencing an MDA contract award to former Sen. Tommy Robertson, Rep. Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, and Rep. Jim Simpson, R-Gulfport, to oversee Katrina Relief grants. Franks said the generous contract award prompted Robertson to kill a bill to raise the tobacco tax during the last session, even though Robertson let an
identical bill out of his committee the previous year. "You see Robertson change his mind like that, and you have to wonder why he changed his mind," Franks said.
The Mississippi Ethics Commission investigated the Robertson contract, though committee members appointed by Barbour and the Republican lieutenant governor successfully stalled the investigation.
Robertson, himself, refused to address Franks' accusation. "You have to consider where the accusation came from, and I'm not commenting on that," he told the Jackson Free Press. Robertson did not win re-election during the Republican primaries this year. Reps. Beckett and Simpson did not return calls. Barbour also did not return calls.
Relief advocates have been lobbying Congress, through the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project, to develop federal legislation to create 100,000 jobs for Gulf Coast residents to rebuild hurricane-stricken communities.
"A program like WPA rebuilt our country during The Great Depression, and employed thousands," Beth Butler of ACORN said, adding that Congress has, so far, taken little interest in the prospect.
"To be honest, we haven't seen a lot of money being spent anywhere but Iraq."
© Jackson Free Press, Inc.
