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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Salt Lake County officials fear they will not receive full reimbursement for aiding Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
State officials told the county the reimbursement will be "far less than" full reimbursement, said Doug Willmore, chief administrative officer.
"That's all we were told, with no reasoning at all," said Willmore, who was quoted in a copyright story in the Deseret Morning News.
"We've been led to believe although we were promised a full reimbursement, the fact of the matter is the reimbursement will be far less than that," Willmore said.
The money will come once the county completes the necessary paperwork and submits its costs to the state, said Derek Jensen, spokesman for the Utah Department of Homeland Security.
Jensen said all Federal Emergency Management Agency-eligible costs will be paid back once the necessary paperwork is completed. Some things like overtime will not be reimbursed, he said.
The state already has received $556,814.05 from the federal government for costs related to the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
How much more money is expected to come, however, is uncertain. Reimbursement requests are continuing to flow into the department, which then submits them to FEMA for final approval, Jensen said.
"At this point, it would be hard to really speculate what is still coming in because, again, it's us waiting to receive information from the individual departments," he said.
The most expensive costs so far, according to records obtained by the News through a Government Records Access and Management Act request, include housing at $274,693.29 and the transportation of evacuees from the airport to Camp Williams and, later, off the military base at $68,014.
To date, the state's Department of Administrative Services, Division of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and Department of Community and Culture, as well as the Utah Transit Authority, University of Utah and Utah National Guard have received reimbursement for services offered to Utah's Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
The Utah Department of Workforce Services, which had a large presence at Camp Williams helping the 583 evacuees with everything from food-stamp applications to transportation, has not received reimbursement, the newspaper said.
Salt Lake County already asked the state for $414,789 to pay for the United Fire Authority's costs, but has not yet received payment. UFA firefighters and paramedics traveled to the hurricane-stricken area to assist.
The county still needs to ask for $142,546 to pay for costs incurred by five other departments including the sheriff's office. The state decided to contract police work to the sheriff's office, and before any payment can be made, a memorandum of understanding must be signed by both the state and the county, Jensen said.
The state sent the memo to the county on Nov. 2 and hasn't received anything back since. However, on Tuesday the Salt Lake County Council reviewed an interlocal agreement between the two agencies so the reimbursement process can start.
"As soon as we get that, we're ready to get everything going," Jensen said.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
