FEMA moves to recoup improper flood payments

CEDAR RAPIDS - FEMA wants money back from some individuals awarded benefits in Iowa's natural disasters in 2008 and 2010.

Letters from the Federal Emergency Management Agency have gone to 88 Iowa applicants who received funds in the floods and tornadoes of 2008 and to 92 Iowa applicants who received benefits for flooding in 2010 as part of the agency's nationwide disaster “recoupment” effort.

Among the letters going to Iowans, the agency is seeking $229,057 from 40 applicants who improperly received disaster funds after flooding in Cedar Rapids and Palo in Linn County. It also is seeking $61,433 from seven applicants who improperly received disaster funds in Iowa City or Coralville, according to FEMA's regional office in Kansas City, Mo.

In total, the regional office is seeking $802,174 from 180 Iowans for payments made after natural disasters in 2008 and 2010.

Bob Josephson, FEMA spokesman in Kansas City, Mo., emphasized that the letters are going out for improper payments, not fraud.

FEMA notes that the agency suspended its payment recoupment program in 2007 after a lawsuit and subsequent court order questioned the agency's program after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

In the meantime, the agency says it put protections in place to significantly reduce the percentage of fraud and improper payments that it then needed to recoup.

The percentage of improperly disbursed payments fell to 3 percent for disasters in the fiscal year 2009, down from 14.5 percent after Hurricane Katrina, the agency reports.

The letters that recipients of FEMA disaster payments are receiving are called “notice of debt” letters. Of the 185 that have gone out from FEMA's regional office in Kansas City, 180 went to Iowans and five to those in the other three states that the agency serves, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

The recoupment effort is part of FEMA's “commitment to being responsible stewards of tax dollars,” the agency states.