Storm dollars

Some Mainers might now wish that the electric line Vice President Gore grabbed during the ice storm had a little juice in it. At least it would have shocked him into remembering Maine longer than the Clinton administration appears to. Its miserly level of federal disaster relief from last winter’s storm is unacceptable for a region that can show both that it has significant need for an amount far higher and that federal money targeted for the region has been wrongfully diverted.

The problem, in brief, is that the storm costs for utilities, telephone and housing came to $74 million, with the utility costs coming to $57 million. But because the utilities are private, they do not qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency relief. The state’s congressional delegation thought it had solved this last winter when it led a fight to send the Department of Housing and Urban Development a supplemental $130 million, with the understanding that a sizable chunk would be used to cover unmet utility needs identified by FEMA.

The chunk turned out to be less than sizable — about $2.2 million for Maine. HUD chief Andrew Cuomo says don’t expect any more. Mr. Cuomo argues that, within HUD guidelines, he is free to distribute the money however he sees fit, and the guidelines say nothing specific about helping the Northeast, even if that money would not have been appropriated without the region fighting for it. Tough talk for a guy in the compassion business.

The delegation has a couple of options, but none of them look particularly promising. It can, for instance, join with other Northeastern states, which also got a piddling amount of emergency funding, and plead their collective case again to Mr. Cuomo. Failing that, the coalition can go to his boss, Vice President Gore and make the same pitch. If that doesn’t work, the states can try the more competitive general emergency relief fund — the omnibus budget for fiscal year 1999 is $250 million.

Without the supplemental aid, the utilities will try to pass the storm costs onto ratepayers, and there is a pretty good chance the Public Utilities Commission will agree. The utilities point out that the alternatives of recovering costs from ratepayers — buying insurance or establishing a rainy day fund — both cost more than making up justified but unexpected costs through rates.

But the question never should have come to this. Maine’s delegation, which worked with HUD staff on this issue, overcame Senate opposition to get the HUD funding; floor speeches show that Congress knew exactly where the money was to be spent. FEMA agreed that the Northeast had legitimate needs that the feds should meet. The funding passed, the utility costs were verified and then — poof — Mr. Cuomo found other states that needed the money and the Northeast was out of luck. A test for Maine’s delegation now is whether it pull the proper strings to cover these legitimate expenses with federal money, from whatever source.

Shortly after the vice president famously pulled on the downed power line in the Lewiston-Auburn area, he said, “I want you to know that the whole country is standing with you in these two communities and throughout the state.” If the whole country’s best effort is $2.2 million for the most devastating ice storm in a century, Maine has problems that extend far beyond a stretch of nasty weather.