FEMA to provide document aide

• By SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 19, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

FEMA officials in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday they’re sending an agency specialist to The Advocate to try to whittle down the $209,099 the agency demanded for copying documents for the newspaper.

FEMA was responding to an article published Tuesday in The Advocate about the agency demanding the money in exchange for copying documents for a story the newspaper planned to publish about post-hurricane contracts.

The newspaper has refused to pay for the documents.

“What we’re willing to do to help move this forward is actually send an FOIA specialist to your office to help walk through this process,” Marty Bahamonde, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s acting deputy director of external affairs, said during a conference call with editors of the newspaper.

U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said in Tuesday’s article that the copying fees were an “absurd price for the truth.”

She also questioned whether FEMA had stored some of the documents requested by the newspaper electronically and added that if the agency had not, “it is plain foolishness.”

“The Disaster Recovery Subcommittee I chair recently launched an investigation into FEMA’s Disaster Housing Program whose decisions were the focus of The Advocate’s request,” Landrieu said Tuesday. “We will work to ensure the bright light of public scrutiny shines on these documents and the decisions they represent.”

FEMA estimated it will take more than 2 million documents to fulfill the freedom-of-information request the newspaper submitted nearly 17 months ago. The newspaper does not know whether the 2 million figure is justified.

The newspaper was looking into maintenance and inspection contracts awarded by FEMA after the 2005 hurricanes.

These contractors were in charge of minor repairs and monthly inspections of travel trailers and mobile homes occupied by evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The agency is charging the newspaper 10 cents a copy and said in the past that none of the documents requested by the newspaper was available electronically.

But on Tuesday, FEMA officials admitted that some of the documents are available electronically, but didn’t identify which ones.

In its original request, written Sept. 21, 2006, The Advocate asked for copies of contracts, billing invoices, payments, inspection logbooks and other documents.