Jimmy Patronis aims to connect Hurricane Isaias-impacted homeowners with FEMA, state aid

Hurricane Isaias marks the 10th hurricane to which U.S. Rep. Jimmy Patronis had to respond. As many of his constituents deal with the aftermath for the first time, his office is already busy helping people with paperwork and communicating with federal officials. Describing the “natural rhythm” of storm response, he feels confident that power companies restore electricity by Monday evening for 95% of homes who lost power. But Patronis knows the lingering recovery will be financial, both as individuals aim to make their homes livable again and local governments bear the cost of storm response. “People are kind of getting their wits about them. They’ve never filed a homeowner’s claim before in their life, let alone one for hurricane damage,” Patronis said. “This is where our teams are working to help people through that. I was with (Chief Financial Officer) Blaise Ingoglia yesterday. He’s got, I believe, three insurance villages set up across the Panhandle. So we’re driving people to those. Sometimes they need to have a face-to-face in order to walk through this because it is complicated. It’s not as cookie cutter as a car claim.” Patronis also urges residents to speak with officials before signing papers to avoid being duped by bad actors taking advantage of disasters. “The bad guys, they want to get a piece of the action. And this is where we’ve got to educate our consumers — who, by the way, don’t have power, don’t have internet, may not have running water, they may not have a roof on their heads. So they’re vulnerable and they make poor decisions,” Patronis said. That’s a role Patronis knows well. He served as Florida’s CFO before his election to Congress. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Ingoglia, a former state Senator, to the post last year. The Congressman admitted it’s different working as a federal official, engaging with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “I could explain to you the state’s response in Portuguese. The FEMA engagement is new to me. New acronyms, new formulas,” he said. “The good thing about it is, I’ve got a lot of folks on my team that have, in previous life, worked for their Congressmen. I’ve got a great team as we’re helping people understand the role that FEMA’s got. So most folks, you know, they think of FEMA after the storm. They think of individual assistance, and the individual assistance is where you’ve got dollars going directly to somebody that maybe doesn’t have any type of insurance, and this is how they get some living expense money to get themselves stabilized in order to kind of help a community hold itself together. None of the individual assistance has started.” Patronis is working right now with fellow members of the delegation on ensuring reimbursements for individuals and governments come in full. He said U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, a candidate for Governor who served in Congress when Hurricane Ian made landfall in his own district, is leading a letter to President Donald Trump asking for accommodations. Past administrations have done that after major storms, including Trump after Hurricane Michael in 2018. “FEMA is on this 75%-25% formula where locals are responsible for 25% and the federal government picks up 75%. But you go and you start pleading with the President and the administration, and you know, and the President jacked up a percentage so the locals paid less. There is some ability to work the administration on some of this,” Patronis said. “We’re going to work the administration, try to make sure that we get our recovery. I’m a big proponent of this. Florida’s a donor state. We give more money to the federal government than we receive back through taxes, and so this is one of the ways we ensure, in our time of need, those dollars we invest the federal government come back to repatriate and get our communities back up on their feet.” Patronis also wants government using commonsense tactics to get work done faster and more efficiently. He uses the example of a homeowner who needs a roof replaced. If FEMA through a direct mechanism can achieve that immediately at a cost of $10,000, that would be better than going through an insurance claims process that takes months and ultimately leaves the government reimbursing a carrier $18,000, Patronis said. This storm hit Florida’s Panhandle after rigorous debate in recent years about the existence of FEMA at all. During peak discussions of government efficiency, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem floated eliminating the agency altogether and letting states lead recovery. Such a change never occurred, and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Noem’s successor, has said he would rather restructure FEMA than eliminate it. Patronis, having interfaced with FEMA as a state official and through congressional oversight, said there should always be scrutiny and efforts to improve disaster response. Ultimately, he said Florida needs to make sure it can best serve residents regardless of what changes occur at the federal agency. “FEMA is a moving target, and I do truly believe that the states have to start to become more responsible for their damages. They’re going to have to start putting money aside, and not every state is got the financial wherewithal as the state of Florida does. But we’ve had good leadership,” Patronis said. “I’ll take it as far back as starting with Jeb (Bush), and we had a dark chapter with Charlie Crist, which, yeah, had the foreclosure crisis, a lot of things were an economic crisis. But then Rick Scott really turned our state around financially, and Gov. DeSantis has just piled upon those successes and taken us to a really outstanding place financially. But you know, we’ve got to be mindful. We’ve always got to be able to take care of ourselves because, at some point, the $40 trillion of debt that the federal government has is going to be a reason why we can’t have the type of response out of federal government we expect. We’ve got to get a control of our spending too.” The post Jimmy Patronis aims to connect Hurricane Isaias-impacted homeowners with FEMA, state aid appeared first on Florida Politics - Campaigns & Elections. Lobbying & Government..