Palazzo flood insurance measure heads to Senate [The Sun Herald]

June 11--U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo is hopeful his amendment to prevent flood insurance hikes from being implemented during the 2014 fiscal year will be adopted in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives last week.

Palazzo, along with Reps. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Michael G. Grimm, R-N.Y., authored an amendment as part of the 2014 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill. It delays the scheduled increases to flood insurance rates by blocking sections of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance

Reform Act of 2012 from being implemented in the 2014 fiscal year. Palazzo believes the measure has good support in the Senate.

"We've got some strong supporters over there," Palazzo said Monday.

Palazzo said the House amendment would give time for more information about the increases to surface.

"The No. 1 thing it would do is halt the increases for a year for anyone facing the threat of the severe new rate increases under Biggert-Waters," Palazzo said of the amendment he, Cassidy and Grimm authored. "It allows us to receive all the reports FEMA owes us so we can see the impacts -- one being the affordability study on how this is going to affect American homeowners."

The Biggert-Waters Act says the maximum increase that the National Flood Insurance Program could impose in a given year was raised from 10 percent to 20 percent, and in some cases, as much as 25 percent. The changes were passed in an attempt to get rid of some of the program's massive debt. Palazzo, who had voted for the Biggert-Waters Act, said he supports getting rid of the flood insurance program's debt, but he believes it can be done in a more compassionate way.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who authored the bill that included the hikes, actually spoke in favor of and voted for Palazzo, Grimm and Cassidy's amendment last week. She said on the House floor she was also concerned about the dramatic and quick increases, which she said was an unintended consequence of her measure.

Palazzo agrees that there wasn't an awareness of how much the Biggert-Waters Act would affect people when it was originally approved by such a wide margin. The 2012 bill was also part of a measure that contained the RESTORE Act legislation which authorized billions in fines from the BP oil spill to go to affected Gulf Coast states.

"I don't think anybody truly understood what the increases were going to be or what FEMA's methodology in their mapping was going to be and that is why this ended up being an unintended consequence of Biggert-Waters," Palazzo said. "That's why we're doing everything we can to fix it and come up with compassionate rate increases over time that don't devastate homeowners living in flood-prone areas."

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., also have introduced a bill in the Senate that would delay the phase in of the new flood insurance rates until communities have more time to prepare for them. The bill would make sure areas that were developing new flood maps by the end of 2013 would be able to maintain the grandfathered rates that are subject to change and allow a five-year phase in of "actuarially sound rates" for newly purchased homes. It would also allow state and local governments some flexibility to subsidize homeowners flood insurance properties if they so choose, among several other provisions.

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