BATON ROUGE (AP) — Gov. John Bel Edwards is asking the Obama administration to reconsider its refusal to lessen Louisiana's share of disaster response costs after March flooding that inundated north and central Louisiana.
The governor's office released the appeal letter Monday.
Louisiana's share of the federal disaster response to the August flooding that ravaged south Louisiana is 10 percent. But FEMA denied a request to lessen the state's costs for the earlier March flooding from 25 percent to 10 percent.
Edwards' homeland security secretary James Waskom wrote to the White House that the two floods should be considered together because they have caused "significant economic hardship" to state and local government.
Waskom wrote that lessening the match rate for the March flooding could save the state an estimated $28 million.
