HUD upset with state’s slow pace in spending $2.5B

The Clarion-Ledger, 1/31/8

The Housing and Urban Development Department is not happy that Gov. Haley Barbour’s administration still hasn’t spent $2.5 billion in hurricane housing money.

“What we need is that the state of Mississippi start spending the money,” said Nelson Bregon, HUD’s general deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Community Planning and Development.

Bregon made the comments at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing this week.

Second District Rep. Bennie Thompson, who heads the committee, said it is an “embarrassment” that the state has “$2.5 billion sitting in the bank and we have people living in formaldehyde-laced trailers.”