Bill Targets Non-Emergency Disaster Spending
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Two Florida Congressmen plan to file a bill Monday that would prohibit federal disaster aid from being spent on puppet shows, dance lessons and similar activities.
“We’ve seen outrages not just in isolated areas but really across the country where FEMA, instead of using money to give people emergency aid, ice, food and shelter, ends up subsidizing puppet show operators and gumbo cook-offs,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.
“Money is going to people who are not even victims of a hurricane,” said the co-sponsor, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. “It’s getting absolutely no results.”
The Congressmen learned of the expenditures from a series of reports in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on “crisis counseling” grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The grants are available to states to help residents overcome mental health problems caused by a disaster.
In October, the newspaper reported that Florida’s $22.6 million counseling program for victims of hurricanes Wilma and Katrina included activities such as yoga on the beach, Hurricane Bingo and the Unelectric Cooking Show with Chef Sunshine. Crisis counselors held presentations for groups of preschoolers, seniors and the homeless, regardless of whether they suffered any hurricane-related stress or were even in Florida for the storms.
In December, the Sun-Sentinel reported that other states had used the FEMA counseling grants on similar activities: “Beat Stress with Crafts” in California, martial arts classes in Virginia and lectures on canning and freezing food in Wisconsin. In Colorado, a grant for Katrina evacuees paid for a “Day of Beauty” with free massages and haircuts, a “Gumbo Cook-Off,” and an Easter egg hunt.
“Money is being spent on puppet shows and frankly some really ludicrous and ridiculous things,” said Diaz-Balart. “The bill will just outright stop that.”
The bill says that the director of FEMA “shall ensure that no disaster relief funds are used for any type of crisis counseling, recreation or self-esteem building classes or instruction, including but not limited to dance and exercise classes, bingo, gardening workshops, puppet shows or theater productions.”
Spokesmen for FEMA and its federal partner that oversees the grants, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said they do not comment on pending legislation.
Congress authorized the grants in 1974 as part of a disaster relief act. The law was intended to provide counseling for people with “mental health problems caused or aggravated” by a major disaster.
Under program guidelines developed by SAMHSA, counseling consists of emotional support and referrals for services, not treatment. SAMHSA considers the shows and presentations an acceptable “outreach” tool to educate people and identify disaster victims in need of help.
Members of Congress have called the activities a waste of taxpayers’ money. In response to their concerns, auditors from two federal agencies are now investigating the crisis counseling grant program.
A preliminary review of Florida’s Project H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People in Emergencies), which ended last month, found that the state was spending its FEMA grants “on reasonable and approved items and activities” that were within federal guidelines.
“We spoke with public officials and officers from voluntary and nonprofit organizations in Southeast Florida who overwhelmingly endorsed the services being provide by Project H.O.P.E.,” wrote Richard Skinner, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a Dec. 22 letter to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. As chairwoman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Collins had asked Skinner to investigate the Sun-Sentinel reports.
“Skits, games and singing” are common methods used by therapists to “stimulate the interest and lower the defenses of at-risk individuals (particularly seniors and children),” he wrote.
“What he said was currently the law does not prohibit FEMA from subsidizing gumbo cook-offs, gardening workshops and bingo games, and that may be true,” Feeney said. “What our bill would do is specifically say it is illegal.”
Diaz-Balart called Skinner’s findings the “typical bureaucratic response.”
“Everything’s within the proper little boxes so the fact that the money is not going to the people it needs to and is not getting the results is irrelevant,” he said. “It’s offensive because this is taxpayers’ money.”
Diaz-Balart said he planned to appeal to FEMA Director David Paulison to prohibit the shows and presentations.
“I’m hoping that the legislation won’t be needed,” he said. “One way or another, this is not going to continue to happen. It can’t.”
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(c) 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
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