Editorial: FEMA still a disaster

Saturday, Dec. 9, 2006 | 7:08 a.m.

A new federal report says the Federal Emergency Management Agency has not only recovered just $7 million of the estimated $1 billion in fraudulent or wrongful payments it made last year to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but the agency also has continued sending out errant payments this year.

While the amount that FEMA has recouped represents less than 1 percent of its misspent aid for 2005, the agency has this year doled out millions in unjustified aid. It includes $17 million in rental assistance paid to families who already were living rent-free in trailers or apartments provided by FEMA, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

In one instance, the GAO reports, FEMA provided free apartments to 10 people in Plano, Texas, and at the same time sent these same 10 individuals $46,000 to pay for out-of-pocket housing expenses - expenses that, obviously, didn't exist. FEMA also duplicated about $20 million in payments to people who claimed damage to the same pieces of property from both hurricanes, the GAO reports. And, the report says, FEMA made millions of "potentially improper and/or fraudulent payments to nonqualified aliens who were not eligible" for such aid.

The list of what else FEMA did wrong adds up to a whopping $1 billion in financial mismanagement, little of which the agency has managed to recover. The reality is that the government never will see the bulk of that money. It was paid to people who most likely lack the means to pay it back - even if they are convicted of knowingly collecting it fraudulently. Once it is gone, it is gone.

FEMA officials told The New York Times that safeguards enacted this year would prevent future errors. But clearly, as wrong payments have continued this year, the safeguards aren't working. FEMA needs to clean up its bookkeeping practices, which apparently are a disaster.