FEMA’s demand for $4 million throws Lake Worth for loop | www.mypalmbeachpost.com

Good article by our new beat reporter. We do seem to be part of a widespread FEMA - phenomena and you can't get blood from a turnip and from a staff that already is knee deep in alligators. From the article, click title for link.

Carr said the work has taken hundreds of hours of staff time in the last two years.
Lake Worth had the option to appeal, and did. But with the exception of the return receipt that Carr’s staff got from the postal service when they mailed the appeal to FEMA in February 2012, they have never had any formal recognition from FEMA that the appeal even exists.
FEMA has, however, sent Lake Worth the equivalent of second and third notices of payment due on the $4 million. Each time, Carr sent polite letters saying that until the appeal is processed, Lake Worth is not paying up.
Since the FEMA demands came in two batches, Carr sent an appeal on the second batch this week, also with a return receipt requested.
Lake Worth has had hundreds of hours of visits from auditors from the state emergency management department, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s bureaucratic parent. The state audit took over a year, and FEMA auditors were at City Hall “a full solid month,” Carr said.
Carr, who was the finance director in Alachua County before arriving in Lake Worth, said he has never encountered this kind of federal micromanaging of disaster money.
“It was more of a spot-check kind of thing, more than each and every time,” he said.
One problem caused by the extraordinary lapse of time between the hurricanes and the audits occurred when FEMA auditors requested to see the repairs done at Lake Worth beach and casino.
When they arrived, Lake Worth was in the midst of a $6.5 million revamp of the casino and beach area that began in 2010, so there were no casino repairs to show because the original casino was gone.

And, tragically funny that the "missing" Casino building is part of the issue here.