BATON ROUGE -- Lawmakers lashed out Thursday at the private firm handing out recovery grants in Louisiana's "Road Home" program, calling the contractor ineffective and pressing the state to stop paying the contractor until more homeowners get aid.

Associated Press

File Photo.

"Either somebody doesn't care or they're incompetent," state Sen. Ed Murray said of ICF International Inc., the contractor hired by Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration to run the Road Home.

The program gives repair or buyout grants of up to $150,000 to homeowners who have suffered damage from hurricanes Katrina or Rita, but few homeowners have actually received aid so far.

The Blanco administration offered little defense of ICF at a House and Senate committee meeting. Commissioner of Administration Jerry Luke LeBlanc, the governor's top financial adviser, said Blanco wasn't pleased with the Road Home and was pressuring ICF to speed its application processing and grant delivery.

"Let me be very frank, the pace of the program has not been satisfactory to us. We're not defending anyone, the contractor included," LeBlanc said.

Last month, Blanco met with the head of ICF to push for quicker aid awards, and she's asking the contractor to notify at least 25,000 homeowners by the end of December about what kind of aid they can expect to receive. Over 10,000 letters have gone out, and 3,000 homeowners have chosen whether they'd like a buyout or repair grant, said Suzie Elkins, director of the governor's Office of Community Development, the agency that monitors the Road Home program.

Murray, D-New Orleans, said the notification letters don't matter because many of them contain errors.

Sixty-eight homeowners out of an estimated 123,000 eligible in Louisiana have received their housing recovery grants through the $7.5 billion program, Elkins said.

"It's not an impressive number," she said.

"Sixty-eight to me, scares me," said Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, chairman of the Senate Local and Municipal Affairs Committee.

Elkins said ICF has corrected each area of the Road Home program that they've been asked to change and payments to the contractor have been delayed until corrections were made to address complaints. She said ICF and her office have run into problems in the grant program as they try to comply with federal rules attached to spending the money.

ICF officials said the Road Home was a massive program unlike any other in the United States and they were doing everything possible to speed delivery of grants.

But legislators asked Blanco administration officials to review ways to withhold further payments to ICF until more grants are given to homeowners. So far, the private company has been paid $80 million for its work in a contract worth as much as $756 million, according to the Office of Community Development.

"Maybe if they didn't get a check one time, they'd get the message," Murray said.

LeBlanc replied, "Sen. Murray, I don't have any problem with your concept" and said he would look into the idea.

New Orleans legislators said state officials don't understand the urgency because they don't return home each day to devastated neighborhoods where people sleep in gutted homes without furniture or in rat-infested trailers.

"From the top down, no one really gets it," said Rep. Cheryl Gray, D-New Orleans, saying she was shaking from anger. "Part of the reason you don't get it is because I look at the panel who we're talking to, you haven't suffered the way we have suffered."

"This program is a failure," said Rep. Juan LaFonta, D-New Orleans.

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)