Only 11 people have received a check so far from the Louisiana Recovery Authority and only about 250 have been told they’ll be receiving money, a pace that brought shocked responses from some officials at a public hearing Friday.

WWL

New Orleans East residents say the pace of LRA money distributions is agonizingly slow.

The LRA has about $10 billion to distribute to homeowners and they’ve had the funds for about three months. There are nearly 27,000 applicants.

“We have over $10 billion at disposal,” said State Senator Derrick Shepherd, D-Marrero. “If we can’t spend it in an effective manner, maybe the president and Congress gave it to the wrong people.”

LRA Chairman Dr. Norman Francis disagreed with the assessment. He said three months is not a long time and he said that the group worked hard to put in safeguards to make sure everything was in place before the funds were distributed.

He said the LRA expects to start conducting about 1,000 interviews a day by mid-October. And, they admit that it takes about six to eight weeks to get money once the interview and application are completed.

That prompted Senator “Clo” Fontenot to question why little was done in advance of the state receiving the money.

“We waited to make sure we had it all,” Francis conceded. “If that was a mistake, we take blame for it.”

An angry Sharon Lamberson, who lives in the city’s Holy Cross area, blames Louisiana politics for the trickle of aid.

“All the filibustering, all the unnecessary meetings and planning must be stopped immediately,” she shouted.