Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas Today Texas Land Commissioner applauded a letter authored by Governor Greg Abbott Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz and the Houston Congressional Delegation led by Congresswoman Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07) and Congressman Pete Olson (TX-22) urging acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought to approve rules from Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for more than $4 billion in Community Development Block Grants for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding for Texas. Feb. 9 will be one year since these funds were appropriated by Congress specifically for mitigation.
Mitigation should be a top priority to prevent future damage from hurricanes and storms while maximizing the use of housing recovery dollars. It has been nearly a year since these funds were appropriated by the 115th Congress.
While the GLO continues its rigorous efforts to implement programs to rebuild family homes reconstruct damaged multifamily affordable rental properties and much more we await funds to help improve infrastructure that will prevent this same type of damage when the next storm strikes.
HUD and OMB need to publish the rules governing the $4.383 billion appropriated to Texas immediately so that we can begin working through the requirements necessary to turn dollars into construction as soon as possible.
Cmr. Bush sent President Donald J. Trump a letter on January 30 2019 requesting help getting mitigation rules approved by HUD and OMB. He previously sent a letter to Director Mick Mulvaney calling January 02 2019 for rule approval for mitigation funding.
Hurricane Harvey was a historic storm in terms of property damage and disruption to the lives of Texans in the impacted area. The most economically destructive hurricane to hit Texas with damage estimated at $113 billion Hurricane Harvey was also the second most destructive in American history. The next hurricane season is set to begin June 1 2019.
