Officials urged FEMA to cut Louisiana some slack in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Francine.
Following the hurricane’s path through Terrebonne and Lafourche, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry flew down with other officials to survey the damage Sept. 12. They gathered in a small room in Terrebonne Parish’s Emergency Operations Center with local officials and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Administrator Deanne Criswell. Following the meeting, Landry held a news conference where he, Criswell and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy spoke to reporters.
According to reporting by The Shreveport Times, Hurricane Francine’s damage could add up to $1.5 billion in insured losses in Louisiana. Landry and other officials said without local investments in protection, this would have cost FEMA much more.
“This area has consistently stood up time and time again from one storm after another,” Landry said.
He said the federal, state and local governments invested in flood protection for Terrebonne and Lafourche.
“This would be a much different place had we not invested in this area… in levee protection, and in hurricane protection in this area,” he said.
Landry said the mitigated damage of Hurricane Francine was a testament to the measures put in place by locals, and that locals’ insurance premiums should reflect that. The hurricane made landfall Sept. 11 as a category 2 hurricane, and left most of Lafourche and Terrebonne without power.
Criswell said FEMA recognized the investments into hurricane and flood protection measures, and their effectiveness. She also said the agency still could see the lingering effects of Hurricane Ida, and how its impact still was causing problems for disaster mitigation today.
“What we see here in Terrebonne Parish is really the result of a lot of investment from local communities, the state of Louisiana, the United States, which really minimized the impact of what we could have seen from this storm,” Criswell said. “Although we know that there are still people that have been impacted by this storm here today, we also know that this community is still recovering from Hurricane Ida, and some of those damages that they experienced then are contributing to problems today.”
Kennedy took the moment to address high National Flood Insurance premiums. He said when communities invest as much in mitigation measures as Terrebonne has, and have stood up to disasters as well as the parish’s levees have, they save the federal government billions of dollars they would otherwise have to spend in recovery efforts.
Why then, Kennedy asked, should these same communities have to pay such a high premium for FEMA’s new flood insurance program?
“Imagine what would have happened if the American taxpayer and the Terrebonne taxpayer, and the Lafourche taxpayer, and the Louisiana taxpayer, had not invested in levee protection in protecting our grid, just imagine,” he said. “Louisiananians need to get some credit for that. And our flood insurance program, we can’t afford it… we’ve got to get credit for the dollars we’ve already invested.
“Flood insurance doesn’t do any good, insurance doesn’t do any good, if you can’t buy it.”
Homeowners handed a bill lacking information
FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, also known as Risk Rating 2.0, went into effect April 1, 2022, and it is pricing some residents in Terrebonne and Lafourche out of their homes. The increases are limited by law to 18% a year. The average total increase to Lafourche will be 321%, and for Terrebonne, 305%. The hardest hit parish is Plaquemines, which will see a 545% increase.
This prompted a lawsuit from 10 states, led by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, that also includes 43 parishes, 12 levee boards and more who say the new rating system is making costs unaffordable for many homeowners.
The lawsuit was scheduled to have a hearing Sept. 10. Due to Hurricane Francine, the hearing was moved to Sept. 24 but ultimately canceled.
FEMA argues it does not have to share the formula that generates the public’s risk rating — the rating that determines insurance premiums. This “secret sauce” is confidential information because it was created by Milliman Inc., the lawyers argue, and its disclosure would divulge their intellectual property. Its disclosure, the attorneys argue, would hurt the company’s ability to turn a profit.
“They robustly demonstrate that the confidential vendor information at issue is highly valuable intellectual property that the vendors closely guard to prevent against competitive and financial harm,” FEMA’s attorneys argued in their motion. “The actuarial and risk modeling data… are highly confidential and treated as such because they reveal the vendors’ proprietary methods… they reveal the vendors’ unique and proprietary assumptions and data on flood hazards and vulnerability, thus exposing the ‘secret sauce,’ developed at great expense, behind the vendors’ basic business operations and revenue-generating activity.”
The document also states that the “data’s unauthorized use outside the confines of the vendors’ paid licenses, including by competitors, threatens the vendors’ ability to make money and remain financially viable.”
Speaking at the Terrebonne Parish Emergency Operations Center on Sept. 13, Murrill said people shouldn’t be forced to pay for an insurance premium when they aren’t allowed to see how that premium is generated.
She is referring to those homeowners who live in what FEMA deems a “special flood hazard area.” According to FEMA’s Risk Rating 2.0, any homeowner who lives in a special flood hazard area, who receives federal dollars either through disaster relief or as a mortgage loan insured by the federal government, must by law have flood insurance.
“I don’t think that the act of Congress that provides for this program and in fact creates a system that mandates that some people have to purchase flood insurance allows for them to keep that information secret,” Murrill said.
The special flood hazard areas are determined by the FEMA flood maps, which local levee directors have said is flawed.These levee directors, like North Lafourche Levee Director Dwayne Bourgeois, have been working with FEMA officials to correct the errors.
The battle to keep this formula away from the public has not just been fought in the courtroom, Congress also has wanted to take a look at it. The House Oversight Committee has asked FEMA to view the formula and also was denied. Talks soured to the point where the House threatened a congressional subpoena via a letter last year.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise visited with Landry on Sept. 13, and he said FEMA has still not turned over the formula. According to Scalise, the subpoena is still not off the table.
“You think about the problems we’ve been identifying with Risk Rating 2.0. They’re jacking up rates on people and they won’t even explain their justification,” Scalise said. “It’s not based on the risk of hurricanes or rain, it’s based on the risk of water in your house. And if you’ve protected yourself, if you’ve done the resiliency, you shouldn’t be penalized by their new rates, and you are today. That’s just wrong.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 06:00:00
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