Sen. Kennedy, Colleagues Urge FEMA to Explain Risk Rating 2.0 Pricing Method

WASHINGTON, July 28 -- Sen. John Kennedy, R-Louisiana, issued the following news release and letter on July 27, 2022:

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and six colleagues today urged David Maurstad, the Senior Executive of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to explain the Risk Rating 2.0 pricing methodology for NFIP premiums.

"Thus far, insufficient data has been disclosed in order to adequately evaluate Risk Rating 2.0 and make judgements about how to address FEMA's implementation of premiums in a reauthorization bill," the senators wrote.

"To improve public understanding and assessment of Risk Rating 2.0, and to achieve our essential transparency objectives in support of our evaluation of current NFIP practices and issues to be addressed in reauthorization legislation, we ask that FEMA publish all the datasets, programs, models, simulations, complete regression model outputs for rating factors, including associated confidence intervals, and inputs and outputs, including all the data and methods described in FEMA's 'Risk Rating 2.0 Methodology and Data Sources, January 18, 2022,'" they continued.

The senators also request that FEMA answer questions on the NFIP and the Biden administration's legislative proposal to change and reauthorize the program and that the information be made available online within 60 days.

Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) also signed the letter.