“No good deed goes unpunished,” Feinberg said today on a conference call with reporters when asked about McCollum’s critique.
Feinberg said he expects a flood of applications when the Gulf Coast Claims Facility goes online at 12:01 a.m. Monday.
The lawyer, hired by BP and President Barack Obama, received high marks for his handling of the compensation fund for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks but is under fire for vague guidelines about how he will dole out the $20 billion BP has pledged for Gulf Coast individuals and businesses who’ve lost money and jobs since the April 20th Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Feinberg has yet to reveal how much money he’s being paid to take over the claims system and won’t release internal documents detailing how BP’s adjusters have been retrained to handle claims.
Some Panhandle business owners waited for months without getting any payment from the oil giant for their losses and those who did receive checks had no idea how the amount was derived or what time period it covered.
Feinberg is using “proximity,” or how close claimants are in relation to where oil washed up on the beach, as one factor in deciding who gets paid. That’s more onerous than federal law, McCollum complained in a letter on Friday.
Feinberg says his system gives claimants a free review of how they would fare in court.
“It’s truly a free preview. Nobody is obligated to come into this program and accept the award unless they voluntarily reach a conclusion that it’s in their interest,” Feinberg said.
Promotions touting tar-free Northwest Florida beaches and clear Gulf waters may hurt Panhandle fishermen’s ability to get the emergency six-month payments the new oil disaster claims czar is promising will be easy to get come Monday.
Ken Feinberg will take over BP’s troubled claims system at 12:01 a.m. Monday. Under Feinberg’s new process, individuals or businesses filing claims will get paid for six months of lost revenues instead of BP’s current month-to-month compensation.
Feinberg told fishermen today they may not be eligible for six full months of emergency payments because the oil well is capped, water closures for fishing have been lifted and tourism officials are promoting the cleanliness of Florida waters and beaches.
Even the first family’s weekend trip to the region – aimed at luring visitors to the region – may not have been a good thing for the fishermen.
“Now I see the president’s coming down. I see they opened up the shrimp grounds yesterday. The fishing grounds are open. I’m reading in the newspaper people are returning to the Gulf,” Feinberg, in Pensacola for the second time in a week, told an audience of about 100 at the Pensacola Civic Center.
Feinberg said it appeared to him that things were getting better in the Panhandle despite a persistent refrain from mom-and-pop hoteliers, restaurant owners and fishermen, whose plight was recently worsened when BP shut down the “vessels of opportunity” program that paid them to aid recovery efforts.
“What do you men you can’t fish for six months? Your compatriots are fishing now. I’m reading it in the newspaper. So the new wrinkle…that I didn’t confront two weeks ago or two months ago is what is the impact of the spill as every day I read in the newspaper things are improving.Thank goodness,” Feinberg said.
“I hear what the president says. I’m watching on TV. The beaches look fabulous.”
President Barack Obama’s administration has dispatched two teams to Florida to help the state recovery from the economic downturn caused by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke today announced he is spending $600,000 on 21 economic development teams to the Gulf Coast states, including Florida, impacted by the spill.
The teams, made up of business leaders, government officials and economists, will “conduct in-depth analyses of critical issues” faced by communities like those in the Pensacola region that have seen tourism drop by up to 40 percent in the aftermath of the spill.
The teams will offer recommendations for how to help revive the economy, according to a press release issued by the White House.
Information about where the Florida teams will be located was not available.
One University of Central Florida economist estimated that the oil spill may cost Florida up to $22 billion in lost tourism revenues.
At an economic roundtable in Metairie, La., Locke announced $31.3 million total in coastal restoration and economic development grants for Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
“These grants are another sign of this administration’s commitment to help the Gulf Coast’s economy and environment recover in the wake of the BP oil spill,” Locke said.
Locke also announced a $30.7 million restoration grant to the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration by the Department of Commerce’s NOAA to fund the restoration of a critical barrier headland near Port Fourchon, La.
President Barack Obama sought to clarify his support for a controversial mosque planned to be built three blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“In this country we treat everybody equally and in accordance with the law, regardless of race, regardless of religion. I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That’s what our country is about,” Obama, in Panama City Beach for an overnight family vacation, told reporters this afternoon. “And I think it’s very important as difficult as some of these issues are that we stay focused on who we are as a people and what our values are all about.”
Obama drew fire last night for remarks he made at the White House Ramadan dinner where he said he supported the building of the mosque, which New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg also approves.
Prior to meeting with Obama this morning, Gov. Charlie Crist said he agrees with Obama.
“I think he’s right. I mean, you know we’re a country that in my view stands for freedom of religion and respect for others. I know there are sensitivities and I understand them,” Crist, who abandoned the Republican Party late this spring to run as an independent in the race for U.S. Senate.
“This is a place where you’re supposed to be able to practice your religion without the government telling you you can’t,” Crist said.
Gov. Charlie Crist praised President Barack Obama for bringing the First Family to Florida’s Gulf Coast for a brief vacation.
“It’s the biggest single commercial you could imagine. God bless him,” Crist said before meeting with Obama, his wife Michelle and a handful of Panama City business owners at a waterfront Coast Guard station.
Republicans have blasted Obama for what they called a “27-hour guilt trip” to the region where the economy suffered as tourism plummeted during BP’s massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crist brushed off the criticism.
“On behalf of Florida and as Florida’s sitting governor, I couldn’t be more grateful that the president and the First Lady of the United States are taking the time to come to our Gulf Coast and highlight Florida and promote tourism and jobs for our people. There’s no other way to look at this,” he said.
Crist broke with the Republican Party earlier this year to run as an independent in the U.S. Senate race after polling showed he was trailing in a potential primary against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.
Crist, who gained notoriety for the now infamous hug with Obama, sidestepped questions about whether Saturday’s visit with Obama would help Crist’s effort to draw support from Democrats to his campaign.
“I don’t know. I have no idea. But I think what’s important is that I’ll stand with anybody who’s going to help promote Florida tourism and our economy. It would be ridiculous not to,” Crist said. “I’m very, very grateful that the President and the First Lady…put such a spotlight on Florida tourism.”
Senate President-to-be Mike Haridopolos wrapped up a three-day tour of Florida highlighting one of his priorities when he takes over the chamber in November: a total overhaul of the state Medicaid system, which he calls broken.
Haridopolos toured cities from Miami to Tallahassee by bus, flanked by GOP Senate leaders Don Gaetz of Niceville and Joe Negron of Stuart, as well as Haridopolos’ wife Stephanie, a family practice doctor in their Melbourne hometown.
It’s not unusual for new chamber leaders to travel around the state to pump themselves up before taking the helm.
Former Senate President Ken Pruitt made a sweep of Florida in a little yellow school bus championing the Bright Futures scholarship for two years before taking over the chamber in 2006.
Haridopolos wants the federal government to approve a Medicaid waiver for Florida that would allow the state to place all of the state’s 2.7 million Medicaid recipients into managed care. It’s unlikely that Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration would approve such a maneuver, especially given Haridopolos’ and crew’s repeated bashing of federal health care reforms and their support for Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against the White House regarding the new health care law.
Expect a major component of Haridopolos’ Medicaid revamp to include tort reform.
He told reporters today that a major problem for Medicaid providers such as hospitals is the high cost of medical malpractice insurance.
“What we’ve consistently heard during these round table discussions is that doctors who have protections against malpractice lawsuits have the ability to deliver a higher quality of care to their patients,” Haridopolos said.
Attorney General Bill McCollum stepped up his demands for more skimming vessels to be sent to Florida to combat black waves of oil as thick as two inches deep washing up on Panhandle beaches.
McCollum, a Republican running for governor, sent U.S. Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano a letter today again seeking more skimming boats for the Sunshine State.
McCollum’s staff located at least four skimming vessels operated by a Jacksonville-based company that helped in the Exxon-Valdez oil disaster and included information about Crowley Maritime in his letter to Napolitano.
There are 28 skimming vessels in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s shores but thousands more are available from other countries offering services that President Barack Obama’s administration has thus far refused to accept.
“I don’t get it. There’s some real disconnect. It’s either incompetence or somebody’s decided we don’t need them,” McCollum said in an interview. “Why should we leave a single American flag vessel available? Why aren’t we calling them? I don’t know for the life of me.”
Here’s what some legislators who’ve served in the military had to say about President Barack Obama’s firing of General Stanley McChrystal, the loose-lipped former commander of the war in Afghanistan who got the boot yesterday over his tell-all interview with The Rolling Stone.
Sen. Mike Bennett, who served four tours of duty in Vietnam in the U.S. Navy, harshly criticized Obama in part because McChrystal had such a good relationship with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and was making progress in the war although some critics question how successful the campaign has been thus far.
“I think both of them expressed very bad judgment. Two wrongs actually don’t make a right. I don’t think that telling the truth is something you should get fired over. He exercised extremely bad judgment. I think the president firing him was just as bad a judgment. He should have figured out another way to reprimand him,” Bennett, R-Bradenton said.
But Rep. Rich Glorioso, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who spent 27 years in the military, disagreed.
“If I was the president I would have fired him also. Even if what he’s saying is absolutely correct, there’s a way for him to do that. But putting it out in a magazine like that..You can’t have a general do those kinds of things. It doesn’t lead to good order and discipline,” Glorioso, R-Plant City, said. “If it was one of my squadron commanders, I’d have fired him. You may not like the person but you have to respect the position. There’s a proper place for you to exercise your beliefs within the chain of command and that’s where it belonged.”
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who’s going to qualify for the governor’s race today, said she was “pretty encouraged” by President Barack Obama’s visit to the Panhandle after meeting with him in Pensacola yesterday.
Sink has been out front demanding that the federal government take over the BP claims process, a tangled web that is taking some business owners weeks to navigate with little success. Obama promised yesterday that a third party would manage an “evergreen account” set up by BP to handle claims.
Sink, a former banker, yesterday asked Obama to set up a large claims office for claims greater than $25,000 in Florida. Those claims now have to go through Louisiana, creating even more hassle for hoteliers, restaurant owners, charter boat captains and marina owners, some of whose losses have already piled up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.
Claims in Florida are going to be larger because of the nature of the losses here, Sink said she told Obama, and small business owners shouldn’t “have to deal with all this bureaucracy.”
“They’ve got to have a physical presence here. No more dialing the 1-800 number over in Louisiana. That’s ridiculous,” Sink said.
Federal officials took just one day to approve Gov. Charlie Crist’s request for a determination of a Florida fishery failure because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Crist asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to grant the determination yesterday, when he also flew over the Panhandle and eyeballed at one oil sheen less than four miles off the shoreline.
Charter boat captains and commercial fishermen say their livelihoods have plummeted in the aftermath of the oil spill. State officials have kept state fishing waters – up to nine miles from the coast in some areas – remain open but federal officials have closed off an ever-growing portion of their waters to commercial and recreational fishing.
The Panhandle’s snapper three-week snapper season, one of the most lucrative times of the year for the tourist region, kicked off on Tuesday.
The fishery failure determination means that fishermen and other impacted businesses will be eligible for federal small business loans to help cover their economic damages.
Crist will be in New Orleans with President Barack Obama today for more on the oil leak and recovery efforts.
President Barack Obama halted all deep-water oil drilling operations in the Gulf for the next six months or until a presidential commission co-chaired by former Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham completes its work.
Obama ordered the 33 deep-water rigs to stop drilling this afternoon as federal officials estimate that between 12,000 and 15,000 barrels of oil per day – up to four times more than previously thought – is gushing from the Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico. The disaster has now surpassed the Exxon Valdez spill more than 20 years ago.
Obama refuted criticism that his administration has not responded quickly enough to the disaster but acknowledged more could have been done in at least two key areas, including the oil flow estimates.
“This is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about. The spill,” Obama told reporters at a press conference this afternoon in Washington. “Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred.”
But government officials should not have trusted BP’s estimates of how much oil was spewing from the well more than 5,000 feet below the sea level, Obama said.
Gov. Charlie Crist told President Barack Obama Floridians are more than a little impatient about the massive oil leak now in the 35th day pumping thousands of barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico.
Crist said the president joined him and the four other Gulf Coast state governors this morning on a conference call concerning the BP disaster.
President Barack Obama on the phone with the five Gulf Coast state governors, including Gov. Charlie Crist, today
“We’re all very concerned. I mentioned to the president, I said ‘I appreciate the sense of urgency. And In addition to that, though, on behalf of my fellow Floridians, there’s a bit of agitation. More than a bit.’ Florida’s beautiful. And we’ve got to protect her,” Crist told reporters at a Florida National Guard welcome-home this afternoon.
Crist said president’s participation on the near-daily White House telephone briefings assured him that Obama is “on it” and that “we’re going to see a stronger response going forward.”
Crist, now running as an independent for U.S. Senate, applauded Obama’s commitment to “doing everything possible” to keep Florida beaches clean but is clearly frustrated by the continuous plume of oil now headed toward the Florida Keys.
President Obama said today BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives put on a “ridiculous spectacle” during their congressional testimony over the ongoing oil spill, which Florida officials say is still about 80 miles from the closest Panhandle beaches.
Obama also acknowledged the federal government still doesn’t know how much oil is flooding the Gulf. From his remarks today:
Now, the most important order of business is to stop the leak. I know there have been varying reports over the last few days about how large the leak is, but since no one can get down there in person, we know there is a level of uncertainty. But as Admiral Thad Allen said today, our mobilization and response efforts have always been geared toward the possibility of a catastrophic event. And what really matters is this: There’s oil leaking and we need to stop it –- and we need to stop it as soon as possible. With that source being 5,000 feet under the ocean’s surface, this has been extremely difficult. But scientists and engineers are currently using the best, most advanced technology that exists to try to stop the flow of oil as quickly as possible.
President Obama applauds Solicitor General Elena Kagan as she is introduced today as his choice for Supreme Court Justice. (AP)
President Obama today nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court (story here).
For whatever it’s worth, the former Harvard Law School dean split Florida’s Senate delegation in March 2009 when she was confirmed solicitor general, a post that involves representing the U.S. before Supreme Court.
In that 61-31 vote, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., supported Kagan while then-U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez voted ‘no.’ Martinez has since resigned and been replaced by Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointee, George LeMieux.
Here’s the statement from LeMieux this morning:
“I look forward to meeting with the President’s nominee, engaging in a thorough evaluation of Solicitor General Kagan’s record as an academic and lawyer for the government, and examining her responses before the Judiciary Committee.
“In making my decision whether to support confirming this nominee to a lifetime position on the United States Supreme Court, I will look for a demonstrated commitment to the unbiased application of the law and an unwavering fidelity to the Constitution.”
Gov. Charlie Crist asked President Barack Obama for a $50 million emergency grant to offset costs related to the oil spill threatening Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Crist asked the president to essentially put his money where his mouth is and keep true to his promise to go all-out to help the Gulf states with the disaster.
“Encouraged by your pledge to ‘spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues…And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused,‘ we ask that you seek ways to help bring about an application of disaster provisions of the Stafford Act that would permit disaster National Emergency Grants and the payment of Disaster Unemployment Assistance,” Crist wrote in a letter to Obama today.
A satellite image on Tuesday shows the oil slick lingering near the Mississippi Delta. The slick appears as an uneven gray shape immediately north of a bank of clouds. Sunlight bouncing off the ocean surface gives the oil slick a mirror-like reflection easily detected by satellite sensors. (AP/Nasa)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will travel to the Gulf Coast on Thursday to monitor the massive oil spill, the White House announced today. She’ll be joined by Commerce Department Secretary Gary Locke, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe.
The group will travel to Biloxi, Miss., to inspect response operations, meet with state, local and private sector leaders, and view firsthand staging areas to protect vital shoreline from the oil spill. Napolitano and Locke will then visit similar operations in Pensacola. Lubchenco and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley will then visit Pascagoula, Miss., to visit NOAA’s seafood inspection lab.
The White House today also published a lengthy timeline of their response to the spill. The Obama Adminstration has been criticized by some for waiting too long to react to the disaster.
We’re still waiting to talk with Senate President Jeff Atwater, whose opposition to offshore drilling has his fellow Republicans lawmakers making plans for 2011. But in the House, incoming Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, says he hopes President Obama’s announcement today will jar something loose in the other chamber.
Cannon introduced a measure last year that would have allowed drilling up to three miles of the coast. His bill this year could be introduced as soon as next week. “And then we’ll see how our partners in the Senate are doing and make a decision from there,” Cannon said.
Democratic state CFO Alex Sink, who hopes to be governor next year, said 125 miles would be fine, but… “I have long been opposed to the near-beach drilling proposal currently in the Florida legislature that puts our tourism economy at risk,” she said in a statement.
House and Senate Democratic leaders want the state auditor general to investigate Attorney General Bill McCollum after he filed a lawsuit challenging the federal health care reforms approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.
Democrats accuse McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor, of using his office as the state’s chief legal eagle to promote his candidacy for governor.
“When a state official can deploy not only the vast resources of his office, but hire outside counsel at taxpayer expense to try and block millions of Floridians from finally getting access to health care, it’s time to stop and demand some accountability,” Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said at a press conference this afternoon. “When the same state official, who happens to be a Republican, leads the charge on a national Republican mission to use health care reform as a rally cry in the upcoming elections, it’s time this legislature stops and asks how much in taxpayer money is being diverted from critical issues to advance a political agenda.”
The Dems complained that McCollum should be protecting consumers by going after pill mills and mortgage foreclosures and instead is using state funds to appeal to conservative Republican voters with the lawsuit.
“This is…for the rank political ambitions of the candidate,” Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said. Gelber is running for attorney general in a Democratic primary against Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres.
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
