FEMA mistake? Lee Commission to push back on FEMA cutting flood insurance discounts

Although there is no formal appeal process for Lee County to follow on FEMA's recent decision to slash the county's and four municipalities' ratings to the lowest possible rung on its floodplain management scale, effectively cutting residents' National Flood Insurance Plan discount from 25% down to nothing, county commissioners decided Tuesday they would pursue one anyways.

"Last time I checked we do not live in a dictatorship," Lee County Attorney Richard Wesch told the board of commissioners. "Our first step is to open a dialogue with FEMA. The comment that this is final, that’s not our system of government."

County Commissioners agreed with the course of action, with Commissioner Brian Hamman suggesting the county and municipalities involved send representatives to the D.C. area to meet with people in-person.

"This is an issue of tremendous magnitude to our county," Hamman said.

Lee residents could pay millions more in flood insurance

Every three years the National Flood Insurance Program conducts a field visit to audit floodplain management activities and flood-mapping records. After each audit, the municipality governments receive a rating from the Class Rating System program.

The Class Rating System is a voluntary federal program that recognizes and encourages community floodplain management activities exceeding the minimum NFIP standards by providing incentive premium discounts. The discounts are given out in 5% increments using a 1-10 rating system, with Class 10 being the lowest and Class 1 the highest.

More: FEMA slashes 25% flood insurance discount in Lee County, blames unpermitted construction

Activities that earn incentives include maintaining FEMA-established base flood elevations for new construction and providing community documentation, information and enforcement of FEMA’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps.

For 17 years, Lee County has had a National Flood Insurance Program rating of Class 5, which gives resident policyholders a 25% discount. This saved Lee County residents roughly $17 million annually, a Friday county press release estimated. Now, though, the rating has been revised down to a Class 10.

The decision is expected to go into effect Oct. 1, according to FEMA.

About 699,000 residents live in areas that will be impacted by the FEMA decision – the city of Bonita Springs, city of Cape Coral, Village of Estero, Town of Fort Myers Beach and unincorporated Lee County.

Only two municipalities, Sanibel and the city of Fort Myers, are not impacted by the decision. Sanibel maintained its Class 5 rating, per city councilmember Holly Smith, and its residents will continue to receive the 25% discount.

There are 51,103 NFIP policies in force in unincorporated Lee County, which has a population of about 388,000.

Over the year and a half since Hurricane Ian, FEMA's representatives conducted site visits across Lee County looking at how locally-adopted floodplain management ordinances were being enforced, and found it lacking, an email from the agency's communication desk said.

The email also said the lowered class ratings and subsequent discount loss were due to "the large amount of unpermitted work, lack of documentation, and failure to properly monitor activity in special flood hazard areas, including substantial damage compliance."

FEMA did not respond to follow-up emails requesting documentation of the visits and concerns, or clarification about what specifically worried officials by press time.

Did FEMA make a mistake?

More: FEMA threatens removal of Lee County property owners from National Flood Insurance Program

More: FEMA 50% Rule: Agency relents on Lee County Property Appraiser values

In Tuesday's meeting, county manager Dave Harner listed every date of an email received by staff from FEMA, and sent back to FEMA since Hurricane Ian. He read off dates for more than a dozen emails.

“At no time were we informed we were in jeopardy of being retrograded," Harner said. He said staff provided all information in a timely fashion and were blindsided by the decision from FEMA.

Harner and several commissioners noted that the county faced tremendous difficulty jumping from task to task after the storm: charged with recovering bodies, providing basic services, communicating with the public on services and permitting regulations, and later pivoting to clean-up, monitoring rebuilding and maintaining regulations.

"You gotta remember where we were at that time," Hamman recalled. "Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced from their homes. FEMA didn’t have enough hotel rooms to put people in."

Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass noted that the federal government struggled to respond to Ian at times, sending less than two dozen people to the county to help with property assessments, and falling far short on promises to house displaced people. Out of 12,000 applications for housing, he said, only 48 were placed in short-term FEMA trailer housing.

Pendergrass said when he spoke with colleagues in D.C., "Their attitude is 'if you’re gong to live in Florida, you pay the price.'

"It’s revenge politics," he said.

Wesch said this was not the first time FEMA made a mistake, citing the agency's misinterpretation of property assessment data, homestead exemptions, and how they applied to the 50% rule in early 2023, panicking residents and municipalities before it reversed course on its decision.

"This is somewhat analogous in my humble opinion of a complex math problem," Wesch said. "What we have so far from FEMA is their answer. What we have to see now is their work, what this was based on.

"We will have a discussion with FEMA to see their math. Maybe we can come to some reasoned conclusion."

Kate Cimini is the Florida Investigative Reporter for the USA TODAY-Network Florida, based at The News-Press and The Naples Daily News. Contact her at 239-207-9369 or kcimini@news-press.com.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Lee County Florida FEMA flood insurance discount; county fights back