BATON ROUGE, LA – Louisiana officials announced a new disaster relief program Monday to help the state recover from the administrative devastation caused by its previous disaster relief program.
The announcement follows an audit flagging $345 million in reimbursement exceptions, prompting officials to classify the resulting paperwork as a federally eligible debris field.
“We have invoices scattered across several parishes, contracts nobody can locate, and entire departments still without a working explanation,” said a program spokesperson. “This is exactly what disaster relief is for.”
The new initiative will fund emergency receipt recovery, temporary accounting shelters, and consultants trained to determine what the other consultants were doing.
Applicants must demonstrate that they were affected by the original program, preferably by submitting documentation the original program already lost.
Officials emphasized that every dollar would be tracked by a new oversight committee whose members will be selected once someone finds the procurement guidelines.
A third relief program has already been approved as a precaution.
