Lee Smithson, the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, inherited a $30 million mess when he took office in February. That’s how much the state could lose in reimbursements from the federal government for MEMA’s mismanagement of a program that was created to help victims of Hurricane Katrina retrofit their homes to make them more storm-resistant.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, following a disconcerting investigation of the program, says it’s not going to give Mississippi the money until the state can prove that it spent what it claims, and that the money was spent appropriately.
Both Smithson and his predecessor, Robert Latham, agree with the findings of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General that the retrofitting effort lacked oversight. The program was largely entrusted in the hands of one MEMA employee, who, according to the federal report, was not cooperative with investigators or with the accounting firm that Latham asked to look over her shoulder.
One suspicious result is that the cost to retrofit a home was roughly double what had been originally estimated.
As massive as was the recovery and rebuilding effort that commenced after Katrina, it’s not surprising that a chunk of the money was wasted or misspent. But unlike with the cleanup, this retrofitting program commenced after the initial panic had passed and should have been performed with the normal checks and balances of good business practices.
That it wasn’t falls largely on Latham’s head. Maybe he got false assurances, as he claims, from underlings that everything was fine, but it was his responsibility to fix things once it came to his attention that they weren’t. According to the Office of Inspector General, he didn’t do so.
It said that MEMA was made aware that it had a problem as early as December 2014, but the state agency did not address it until Smithson took over 14 months later.
Smithson and Gov. Phil Bryant said they believe Mississippi will eventually get most of the outstanding reimbursement. We’ll see.
