This week, the first round of letters went to some 142,000 homeowners informing them they can reopen Sandy claims. This after FEMA found some of its contractors had filed fraudulent claims, low-balling the amount of money needed for repairs. As of May 15, more than 74,000 claims had been filed for Sandy damage. Another 2,200 are tied up in court. And now homeowners who think they were shortchanged can refile. FEMA’s allowing the second look at the urging of New Jersey’s United States senators and Representative Frank Pallone. Pallone told NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams that this action only applies to the flood insurance program.
“There’s still people who are seeking funds through FEMA, which is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that are going to the state. So we still have a lot of people who have not received their funds, the federal dollars, through the state in addition to flood insurance. This is just for flood insurance,” Pallone explained.
Pallone said he believes the process is good. He said after getting the letter, residents will be given a caseworker. “FEMA has engineers that are going to review this because, as you know, the biggest problem were falsified engineering reports. And then within 90 days I believe a determination will be made and then they will, if they feel that the payout was inadequate and that based on fraud or other problems with the engineering report, then they will force the insurer to make up the difference,” he explained.
According to Pallone, FEMA should be able to handle the influx of requests. “As you know this was as a result initially of a court action that showed these falsified engineering reports. I think that the number that were found so far were like a thousand or so. So you know, the 142,000 letters that are going out, hopefully there aren’t that many. But we don’t know. We’ll have to see. That’s the whole idea.”
Pallone has sponsored 21st Century Cures legislation that would allocate money for biomedical research funded by the National Institutes of Health. He said the legislation would provide $10 billion over five years or $2 billion per year in mandatory funding that the federal government will have to allocate, adding that additional funds could also be allocated.
“I really can’t put a dollar on how much will come to New Jersey. the way this is organized, the whole idea of 21st Century Cures, is to streamline the process for new drugs or new medical devices for diseases that have not really made much progress in terms of cures. And so to the extent that Rutgers or NJIT or other institutions in New Jersey are dealing with those types of diseases, they’ll get more money,” Pallone said. “Now I think what you’ll start to see — and that’s the whole idea — is that more research will actually be done on diseases for which we have not found cures or found much progress. That’s the whole idea. I think that you’ll see Rutgers and other institutions doing more research in those areas and capturing the funds.”