An Associated Press review that included interviews with legal specialists, government officials, and more than 300 Gulf Coast residents found a process beset by red tape and delay, and at the center of it all a fund administrator whose ties to BP have raised questions about his independence.
Now, the dissatisfaction has reached a fever pitch: Lawmakers in Washington are demanding that the White House step in, the Louisiana governor and others want a federal judge to intervene, and the people most affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster are threatening to line the courthouse steps if they don’t get the changes they seek from administrator Kenneth Feinberg.
“A lot of promises were made by Feinberg and President Obama that this would be a very open process, and I just don’t feel that’s the case,’’ said Representative Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican.
Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who runs the fund and was lauded for his work overseeing the compensation fund for 9/11 victims, has insisted that he is being fair.
He has acknowledged that the system is clogged by the sheer volume of oil spill claims, along with inflated or outlandish requests.
Among them: One person filed a claim for the entire $20 billion, while another asked for $10 billion; a boat captain sought reimbursement for lost income for himself and four deckhands, but it turns out he didn’t have any deckhands; and a fisherman claimed he lost a month on the water, but his boat had a hole in it and was dry-docked even before the spill.
Feinberg recently said he believes the Gulf of Mexico should largely recover from BP’s oil spill by the end of next year, and he doesn’t think the entire $20 billion will be needed to compensate victims. Only half of that should suffice, he said.
“Overall, I think the program has worked well,’’ Feinberg said in an interview. “I think the program has been fairly transparent.’’
