Bonding requirements, HMGP problems on agenda
A legislative committee will hold a special hearing Wednesday for home elevation contractors participating in the state's troubled Hazard Mitigation Grant Program. The Select Committee on Hurricane Recovery meeting will be at the New Orleans City Council chambers starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday.
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Carlos Ortega, a worker with Clesi Foundations, a shoring company that started out doing industrial foundations and has branched out into residential work, moves support wood at a house in Harvey earlier this year.Committee chairwoman Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, called the hearing to discuss new rules for contractors in the state's troublesome Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.
Peterson blasted Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration earlier this month for implementing new bonding requirements for homeowners. She joined smaller elevation contractors in complaining that the new requirements threatened to knock those firms out of the $750 million grant program.
The bonding requirements have been a lightning rod for criticism because the Jindal administration implemented them in response to lobbying from Sen. Julie Quinn, R-Metairie, who represents the largest contractor in the program, Orleans Shoring. But state officials, led by Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater, say the new policy is needed to protect homeowners from the unscrupulous contractors who have plagued the program.
The program's difficulties go beyond shoddy work by contractors, however. There are also state and federal investigations into allegations of graft and favoritism toward certain contractors. And the probes intensified last week after Orleans Shoring ran a private sting on its competitors and caught seven of them on video signing agreements that would have let a homeowner keep grant money that was intended to pay for the house-lifting work.
