State backs off plan for disaster funding
Harris County had complained that the diverting of cash would hurt housing efforts
The Texas General Land Office said Wednesday it would change how it plans to spend federal disaster recovery funds after Harris County officials complained the agency was going to divert money from buyouts of local Hurricane Harvey-damaged homes to finance state costs for another program.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in December allocated $46 million to Harris County, a sum county officials largely planned to use to buy out roughly 250 homes.
The GLO this month released a draft funding plan that said it would hold back $8 million of the county’s $46 million allocation and use it instead to pay the state’s required contribution to a Federal Emergency Management Agency temporary home repair program.
Federal disaster recovery funds typically flow through the state, and the GLO was designated as the agency responsible for distributing those monies after Harvey.
Harris County officials this week criticized the GLO plan, saying the $8 million could be used to finance 75 buyouts. The land office, they said, should not take money from one federal grant program to pay the state’s share of another federal grant program.
On Wednesday, a land office spokeswoman said “the GLO spoke with the governor’s office about this request from Harris County and agreed to the change as requested to keep these funds on a fast track to Texas.”
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said he assumed it was an oversight by the GLO and “once it was pointed out, the state did the right thing. The state does have, I think, ample resources in this case to deal with a natural disaster.”
Politics, infighting
Texas officials said Wednesday that they would fund the state’s $8 million share for the rapid rehousing program from $38.6 million that Gov. Greg Abbott ordered transferred to the General Land Office from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Abbott said the transfer would not affect the operations of the criminal justice agency, which runs the state prison and parole systems, noting the Texas Legislature would replenish the funds when it convenes for its next regular session in January 2019.
Disaster recovery experts said the back-and-forth reflects what likely will continue to be a contentious process after Harvey’s devastation, in which politics and a perennial shortage of disaster relief funds pit different levels of government and localities against one another.
Local officials, including Emmett and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, have called on the state to pledge money from its $10 billion Rainy Day Fund — reserves comprised of oil and gas taxes —to finance flood control infrastructure projects, including a third reservoir and dam northwest of the city.
Abbott has said the state is willing to pay if Congress does not agree on a deal to finance that and other projects and recovery efforts.
The U.S. Senate is considering an $81 billion disaster relief bill passed by the House in December that has become entangled in negotiations over the federal budget, immigration, military spending and other issues.
The conflict between Harris County and the state over recovery funds is common after disasters, said Earthea Nance, an urban planning and environmental policy professor at Texas Southern University.
She said that the conflicts typically when states and localities are politically out of sync.
“If you’re in lock step with your state, then it’s easier,” Nance said. “If you’re not, then this is what you see.”
Nance, who helped create New Orleans’s hazard mitigation plan after Hurricane Katrina, said that in some cases Washington forbids the use of federal grant funds to pay for local matches to other federal grant programs. In other cases, the practice is common.
No rule against it
“If there is no specific prohibition against this use, and if HUD agrees to it via their approval of the Action Plan, then yes, you can do such matches,” said Robert Olshansky, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
A HUD spokesman said federal law did not forbid the practice.
A FEMA spokesman said it was up to the state to determine how to fund the non-federal match for the housing repair program.
Pete Phillips, the GLO’s senior deputy director for community development and revitalization, said the state has used disaster recovery grand funds to finance other grant programs for several prior disasters, including Hurricane Ike and Rita.
Still, the proposal met with criticism at Harris County Commissioners Court this week.
“The state is sitting on $10 or $11 billion in the Rainy Day Fund and they can’t take $8 million out of that to provide the match? Instead they are going to take it out of home buyouts?” Emmett said.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who had joined in the criticism on Tuesday, applauded the GLO’s reversal Wednesday.
“I applaud Governor Abbott and Commissioner Bush for stepping up and picking up the state’s share for this vital home repair program,” he said. “Using state money to cover their share allows Harris County to use the $8 million in federal dollars to provide buyout and relocation assistance for an additional 75-80 homeowners living in harm’s way and create new flood detention and mitigation for surrounding communities.”
While the state has said it will not use the disaster recovery grant funds for the housing repair match, the draft plan will not be formally changed for weeks. The public comment period ends on Feb. 13.