HUD’s surprise

Secretary Andrew Cuomo of Housing and Urban Development kindly offered this week to reconsider the Northeast’s request for ice-storm relief money only to find out that he may not have the money to distribute. Surprise action by the Senate to propose transfering the funding and authority for emergency block grants from HUD to the Federal Emergency Management Agency is the result of deep and long-standing unhappiness with HUD’s performance.

Mr. Cuomoa announcement earlier this week suggested he had listened to the legitimate concerns of Maine’s congressional delegation about the rate increases faced by electric consumers unless the utilities could recoup at least some of the $57 million lost in the January 1998 ice storm. The change in policy from the unexpected denial of funds last year to advance warning that another opportunity to recoup the money was an important shift for HUD. It showed an agency willing to rethink its position on states left in a bad spot after they thought they had helped themselves.

To recap, the problem was that after Maine senators helped secure a $130 million appropriation for storm-damage relief, the money, which had to be directed through HUD, was used by the agency for purposes other than the ice storm. Maine got a piddling $2 million from that fund; other Northeast states were similarly shortchanged and similarly furious. HUD claimed it could use the money however it wanted to; the delegations from the Northeast pointed to the Congressional Record, which, on the decision to appropriate the $130 million, was full of words like ice, tree limbs, darkness and cold. The Northeast was mentioned specifically. HUD spent the money elsewhere anyway.

Maine’s congressional delegation deserves credit for persistence on this issue — it kept in contact with Secretary Cuomo during the last year, trying to persuade him to change his mind on the funding and, as of Tuesday, he did. As of Thursday, it may not have mattered. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s vote to shift $313 million already given to HUD to FEMA was a highly unusual move that shows that Maine was not alone in being frustrated by the agency. And it probably is not the last it will hear from the Senate this session.

Now it was HUD’s turn to be outraged. One of its spokesmen offered that it was “absolutely shocking that they would play politics with funds meant to help Americans who have been victims of natural disasters.”

As victims of a natural disaster that occurred nearly 14 months ago and who have been waiting while HUD spent money appropirated for the Northeast just about everywhere but the Northeast, Mainers might chuckle at this “shocking” turn of events — or will after HUD or FEMA or any other agency sends the money due to the state.