New York City Admits Failing FEMA Among Millions Of People After Super Storm Sandy: NPR

A few days after Hurricane Sandy's move on the east coast, employees of the New York City Transportation Department listed the damage to the agency's vehicle fleet. This information was passed on to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which would give the city enough money to replace damaged vehicles with new ones.

Only one problem: many of these vehicles were damaged before Sandy struck. Some had not been operational for years and had been designated to be saved well before the storm.

The city has now agreed to repay $ 5.3 million to the federal government for its false claims, according to the proposed settlement Wednesday.

City officials who certified that the vehicles had been damaged during the flight Sandy knew that they were making false statements or did so "with reckless disregard or willful blindness as to their truth," said District Attorney for the New York District of the United States, Geoffrey Berman. complaint accompanying the proposed regulation.

"When people lie to FEMA about the cause of property damage in order to reap a windfall, it compromises their ability to provide financial assistance to legitimate victims who desperately need a disaster," Berman said. a statement.

When looking at the car fleet, city employees "were content to determine if a vehicle had sustained damage during the storm, regardless of the condition of the vehicle before Sandy," the complaint said. As a result, "many vehicles included by Fleet Services in its" final "list of damaged vehicles by Sandy were non-operational – and some had even been marked for salvation – years before Sandy."

In a statement, the DOT said it first became aware of the problem in 2016, when a US lawyer alerted the department that his Sandy-related claims were too broad. The DOT told NPR that it "cooperated fully" with an investigation and since then had put in place stricter procedures to reduce the risk of this happening again, including a new subsidy compliance officer and a system. Complete and centralized tracking for the thousands of vehicles of the agency. . "

But according to the bylaw, a city employee first reported to the city ineligible claims in 2014. DOT's deputy commissioner, who had signed the certification and said Sandy had caused the damage, had been informed by the employee in a June 2014 email that some of these vehicles had been "junk for years". This employee stated that the Department of Transportation itself had told NYPD in 2009 that paving machines "had been under the road in the landfill for seven years and were[ed] apart from vandals, "said the complaint.

Even after receiving this e-mail, the city continued to ask FEMA to reimburse these vehicles.

It was not until the city became aware of the US prosecutor's investigation that she changed her request by offering to return more than $ 3 million for seven paving vehicles that she had mistakenly included in her first claim. reimbursement, according to the regulations.

But the US attorney said the city was still demanding reimbursement for several more vehicles that had been damaged before the storm.

"With so many New York residents affected by Storm Sandy, it is critical to ensure that every dollar spent on relief is used and accounted for properly," said Mark Tasky, Special Agent for the Department's Security Office. of US Homeland Security. Inspector General, in a statement.

NPR's Vanessa Romo contributed to this report.