Craig Fugate, the FEMA Administrator, says that he likes to ask municipal and county and other local government officials in areas prone to flooding, to think about the resiliency of their tax base. Remarks of W. Craig Fugate on January 15, 2013 on The Effects on the Environment of Natural and Man-Made Disasters, at a symposium in Washington D.C. The symposium was broadcast live on television on C-Span 3.
The idea is a simple one, really. It is designed to attract the attention of local government officials in terms very familiar to them. If a storm like Sandy washes away a town's tax base, for example, then the local officials are likely to understand immediately what this means to future services and other operations of government.
This idea is explored in a newspaper report and captured in a headline, reported by Alison Leigh Cowan, "Towns' Next Hit From Hurricane Is to Tax Bases" p. A1, col. 6 (New York Times Nat'l ed., Friday, January 25, 2013).
The public policy effects of Sandy on matters including but not limited to Flood Insurance are explored in a series of posts here and on Insurance Claims and Bad Faith Law Blog, ending here on December 12, 2012. There are links to the preceding articles throughout the series, and the last post has links to all of them.
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