Flood relief: How fast is fast enough?

Describing flood relief as bogged down in bureaucracy, DFL senators on Friday accused Gov. Tim Pawlenty of failing to eliminate delays in the distribution of millions of dollars to stricken homeowners, businesses and farmers in southeastern Minnesota.

But the administration said that relief has reached victims much faster than it did after floods in 1997 and 2002, and that local economic development agencies haven't distributed all of the state relief already available.

A $147 million disaster relief bill for the region was enacted during a special legislative session in September. It included waivers from some state regulations to speed up the relief.

Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, DFL-Winona, said administrative agencies such as the Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) have sometimes neglected to relax regulations, stalling help for hundreds of families. "I would ask the governor to do whatever he can to unclog the slow bureaucratic pipeline," she said.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said the governor "has personally directed state agency commissioners to get flood relief to those who need it as quickly as possible."

The August flooding killed seven people and caused an estimated $67 million in property damage, including damage to 1,500 homes.

The Minnesota Housing Finance Agency has committed or paid out nearly $8 million of the $17 million the Legislature set aside for housing assistance, said Commissioner Tim Marx. The money provides favorable loans to homeowners rebuilding damaged property.

"The bottleneck might be getting the bids ... for construction," he said. "We need to know how much money to disperse. And that sometimes can take a little bit of time."

Responding to DFL assertions that agencies failed to waive burdensome rules, Marx said his agency moved early to remove income limits for loan recipients.

"There is no bureaucratic delay, there is no improper interpretation of the statute," Marx said. "The system is working, and working at an increasing pace."

DEED received $35 million from the relief package to aid damaged businesses. It has authorized $32 million to be spent and paid out $7 million.

Commissioner Dan McElroy said that the first business relief was paid out Nov. 21 and that money goes out "as soon as we get a request" from a city or county economic development authority.

Paperwork to blame

McElroy said the state is responding faster to the August flood than it did to the 1997 flood of the Red River Valley or the 2002 flood in Roseau. Housing assistance was first awarded six weeks after the August flood, compared to 17 weeks after the 1997 flood and 12.5 weeks after the 2002 flood, administration officials said.

But Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, said "there is no excuse for the delay in providing needed aid" to southeastern Minnesota.

Erickson Ropes said Pawlenty hasn't done enough to prod the state agencies to remove roadblocks to getting aid out.

"I'm asking the governor to do what he can to strip away the red tape," she said. "I can't believe it's been four months [since the flood], and the vast majority of my flood survivors have not gotten state aid."

Business assistance funds "were more or less made available in the past month," Thompson said. "It's just that the paperwork has to get in."

And a substantial number of homeowners have not applied for assistance available to them, she said.

Federal money also delayed

In addition to the state money, $10 million in federal flood relief available to five southeastern counties has been held up because they didn't complete a disaster plan.

Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Democratic Rep. Tim Walz have asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to waive the requirement, and the state is formally seeking such a waiver.

"In hindsight, we certainly wish we had, but it didn't happen," said Karen Brown, the Fillmore County coordinator.

Brown said the waiver is needed because putting together the required disaster plan could take more than a year and the FEMA aid is available only through August.