Rep. Dan Donovan
Disaster assistance reforms secured by U.S. Rep. Dan Donovan (R-NY) became law as part of the newly signed funding package for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
U.S. President Donald Trump on Oct. 5 signed into law the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, H.R. 302, to reauthorize federal aviation programs, improve aircraft safety certification processes, and provide protections for certain sports medicine professionals, among numerous other purposes, according to the bill’s text.
“I applaud Congress and President Trump for standing with New Yorkers and other disaster victims so that no one has to face these problems ever again,” Rep. Donovan said on Oct. 9.
Some of the other items included in H.R. 302 are Rep. Donovan’s disaster recovery provisions, which make several reforms to how federal disaster aid gets dispersed and adjusts the limits on certain disaster aid programs, according to a summary released by his office.
Another provision from the congressman included in H.R. 302 provides $1.7 billion in emergency-designated Community Development Block Grant supplemental appropriations for areas affected by disasters in 2018, according to the summary.
“With President Trump’s signature, we can now reform a disaster assistance process that was terribly unfair for Superstorm Sandy victims,” the lawmaker said earlier this week, referring to the ensuing federal funding chaos that followed the massive 2012 hurricane that killed at least 147 people in the Northeast United States, Canada and the Caribbean, according to the National Hurricane Center, and forced then-President Barack Obama to declare a state of emergency in six states and Washington, D.C.
As one of the nation’s most-costliest tropical cyclones, Hurricane Sandy has required residents and the government to spend billions of dollars to cover massive expenses for repair, restoration and supplemental mitigation protection and prevention coverage.
According to a summary provided this spring by Rep. Donovan’s staff, homeowners sought immediate individual funding relief for storm damage from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Once applicants exhausted such coverage, FEMA advised they apply to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for low-interest disaster recovery loans to help cover repairs and rebuilding costs.
However, a secured SBA loan meant applicants simultaneously became ineligible for no-pay-back grants from the city’s Build It Back disaster recovery program funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Therein laid the resulting inequity problem, according to the summary. For example, two neighbors might have had the same amount of damage costing similar amounts, yet one received free Build It Back grant money while the other owed big on an SBA long-term loan.
Rep. Donovan worked with local and federal officials on reforms to reverse that situation, and some of that language now is included in H.R. 302.
This week Rep. Donovan noted that he was on Staten Island, N.Y., when Hurricane Sandy devastated the area and he saw residents’ hardships firsthand.
“This should have been addressed by our previous representative – not six years later as we approach the Superstorm Sandy anniversary later this month,” he said.