House panel to probe state denial of flood funding
WASHINGTON — A congressional panel is set to review the Texas General Land Office’s denial of federal flood mitigation funding to Houston and Harris County, the latest in an ongoing dispute over more than $1 billion in aid approved by Congress and doled out by the state.
The Democrat-led House Financial Services Committee wants Land Commissioner George P. Bush to testify about the decision during a hearing next week, said U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat who chairs the panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee.
It’s unclear yet if Bush will appear at the July 15 hearing. Bush, a Republican who is the grandson and nephew of U.S. presidents, recently announced a bid for Texas attorney general. The GLO did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The hearing is the latest in a years-long saga over $4.3 billion that Congress awarded Texas in February 2018 to help the state recover from Hurricane Harvey six months earlier. Green said the hearing is aimed at making sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We don’t want this to become the norm,” Green said. “We want this to be a one-off. And the best way to make it a one-off is to let
people know we are not going to allow this to happen.”
The state was tasked with doling out the funding, and the GLO earlier this year denied more than $1.3 billion in applications submitted by Democrat-led Houston and Harris County,
which suffered catastrophic flooding during Harvey. But after heavy criticism from local Republican and Democratic elected officials, Bush said he would ask the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to allocate $750 million directly to Harris
County.
Bush and other GLO officials have blamed federal rules for the initial denial.
In a June 10 letter to Green and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, another Houston Democrat who serves on the oversight subcommittee,
Deputy Land Commissioner Mark Havens wrote that HUD rules did not allow the state to use Harvey damage as a metric for doling out the funding. The state therefore couldn’t “grade on a curve to give Harris County and Houston awards over their equally eligible, fellow Harveyimpacted counties and cities,” Havens wrote.
But a Hearst Newspapers analysis of the HUD flood mitigation program found that the federal government grants significant discretion to states to decide how to spend funds that they receive, and that the criteria that Bush’s office developed discriminated against populous areas.
A Hearst investigation also found that the $1 billion in aid distributed by the GLO in May disproportionately flowed to inland counties with less damage from Harvey than coastal communities, which bore the brunt of the storm.
Green said he wants Bush to explain the initial denial, as well as why it has taken so long to get the federal funding out. .
“This is pretty serious, when you look at the time that has lapsed … then not to have the money spent on people who are still suffering and waiting to have the relief and the money is in the hands of GLO,” Green said. “I think GLO should explain.”