Sun Herald: Flood Insurance Extended, Not Changed

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Sun Herald: Flood Insurance Extended, Not Changed

The House approved a six-month extension of the National Flood Insurance Program Wednesday, without changes to the existing program, although Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, secured a promise from House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., to pursue wind coverage on the House floor.

The flood insurance program, due to expire Sept. 30th, was extended to March 31, 2010 and Taylor engaged in a series of scripted questions and answers, known as a colloquy, with Frank, on the House floor. The House, in the last Congress, approved Taylor's plan to incorporate wind coverage in the federal program but the Senate nixed it and this year the Obama Administration said it opposed the wind plan.

Taylor asked Frank about "adding wind insurance to the National Flood Insurance Program so there isn't any discrepancy, doesn't matter if the wind destroyed the house or the flood did; if you built it to code and paid your premiums, you're going to get paid."

Taylor then said that he knew that Franks' committee was busy with the housing crisis, "but folks in the affected regions, now 52 percent of all Americans, are curious; at what point do you think there will be talk about these changes?"

Frank responded, that "it is certainly our intention, the leadership of the committee on the majority side to work with the gentleman to extend that protection and hope that maybe things will change in the Senate."

Taylor also said that flood insurance coverage should increase above $250,000 and that the bill should address concurrent causation — which enabled insurers to bill the government for flood coverage even if the majority of the damage came from winds.

Frank said that Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chair of the committee's Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, is interested in holding hearings on flood insurance later this year.

Meanwhile, in a release, SmarterSafer.org, which promotes mitigation, cheered the program's extension.

"There is no question that the National Flood Insurance Program is in critical need of reform and improvement," said David Conrad, senior water resources specialist for the National Wildlife Federation, which is part of the group.

"With a debt to the U.S. Treasury of over $19 billion that is growing and increasing evidence that the program's subsidies and too-weak standards are encouraging unwise development in high-risk and environmentally-sensitive areas, it is truly time for Congress to make basic changes to this program."

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