Officials fear Texas may have to foot bill for evacuees' care

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/091405dntexkattexascosts.124a6555.html


The bills are piling up: rent, police overtime, meals, transportation, hospital beds. Texas is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars caring for Katrina victims – but exactly how much may not be known for weeks.

And as they start tallying costs, state officials are becoming increasingly worried that despite a federal disaster declaration, Washington will leave Texas taxpayers stuck with huge bills.


Are we concerned? Yes," Gov. Rick Perry's spokesman, Robert Black, said Tuesday after the latest in a series of meetings between state and local leaders and federal emergency officials. "We are not completely comfortable with the federal response in terms of education and Medicaid."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said that inevitably, some evacuees would end up as Texas residents, so the state will have to accept responsibility. "We will have to come up with some arbitrary timeframe," he said.

Texas won't even pay for decent schools or child health care or, you get the idea. It will make for a very interesting Lege session in 2007.

Probably cost us all our newly won seats...

And he thought that knight in shining armor schtick would play really well in 2006. Sucker.