Federal funds for disaster relief, Baldwin County request to churches lead to Baptist black eye

Citing too much media scrutiny, three Baptist organizations in Baldwin County have withdrawn from a process that could have granted them thousands of dollars in federal reimbursement for housing hundreds of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
   
According to Leigh Anne Ryals, director of the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency (EMA), the county and the churches were working out the kinks of an unprecedented request for funds when the Mobile Register, printed information that “the churches felt muddied their heartfelt efforts to help.”
   
First Baptist Church, Robertsdale, and Lagoon Baptist Church, Gulf Shores, both in Baldwin Baptist Association, along with First Eastern Shore Missionary Baptist Association in Daphne, were the only three of nine area church-based shelters that entered the reimbursement process. The organizations began the process after receiving an Oct. 31, 2005, letter from Ryals.
   
The written invitation came on the heels of President George W. Bush’s issuing disaster declarations in several states, including Alabama. The disaster declarations allowed shelter expenses to be covered by disaster relief funds under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. Faith-based organizations, however, were ineligible under the act unless a municipality applied on their behalf — a new option to churches, Ryals said.
   
In the letter, she stated that Alabama EMA had “made arrangements through the County Commission to reimburse churches for eligible expenses incurred with the sheltering of Hurricane Katrina victims,” provided that the churches submit to the state documentation of all their expenses and a form signed by commissioners. 
   
The form, drawn up by Alabama EMA, hit the commissioners’ desks mid-January needing a signature verifying that the county had officially “tasked” the churches to open shelters. But the commissioners said they could not sign the form because that’s not the way it happened.
   
“It sort of hit us cold at a workshop — I wish we had had a chance to look at it (the form) before then,” said Commissioner Frank Burt. “We wanted to help the churches, but we couldn’t sign that affidavit — we needed to reword it into a resolution that said what really happened.”
   
What really happened, according to Ryals, is that buses upon buses filled with hundreds of evacuees showed up in Baldwin County with no place to go. The county had no facilities prepared to house that many people, so churches stepped up of their own accord — not “tasked” by the county — and opened shelters of their own.
   
“We couldn’t have handled the shelter initiative without the churches,” she said. “We were looking at this (the reimbursement option) as a chance to grow and enhance our shelter plan to take care of secondary organizations like the churches.”
   
On the front page of the Register Jan. 23, the headline read, “Katrina debate: Reimburse churches? Commissioners in Baldwin County say money is available for nonsecular shelters, but that they won’t fib on federal form and claim they asked the churches to help.” Three paragraphs in, the story quoted Burt as saying at the aforementioned workshop, “We are going to enter into a lie with the church? Now, I ain’t willing to do that.”
   
When the question was raised about the form’s wording, the county commission “put the skids on,” Ryals said. There was also an issue of liability in the letter noted by lawyers that needed to be dealt with, she said, acknowledging her decision to send the letter without working out the legal ramifications on the front end.
   
But the debate with the commission was never whether the churches deserved the funding — the question simply rested in how the county went about it, county officials contend.
   
“We support the churches, all of them. We want to step forward and get all their money back,” said Commissioner Ed Bishop. “But we want to tell the truth in the process.”
   
And now the form that was being revised is moot, with the three churches withdrawing their request.
   
“We’ve learned a lot for the next storm,” Bishop said. “We will have it all done ahead of time next time and avoid a lot of headaches.”
   
And avoid a lot of heartache, according to Salam Shorrosh, pastor of Lagoon Baptist. Ryals said after the article was published, Shorrosh called and “respectfully withdrew,” saying that church members were hurt by the article, which had moved past the form wording into other topics as well.
   
The Register article explored another debacle — whether churches should seek reimbursement at all.
   
Billy Lambert, a pulpit minister whose church — Summerdale Church of Christ — housed evacuees, was quoted in the article, saying why his church didn’t apply for the funds. “If we’re covered by donations, first of all, I think it would be unethical. I believe that would be double dipping, wouldn’t it?”
   
Commissioner Wayne Gruenloh said he believes the press construed a negative opinion in what was a resolvable situation. “The press, I believe, has hurt the situation. It really is a shame that this has gotten to this point,” he said.
   
Shorrosh said his church submitted its receipts believing that they would go to state representatives to study the price of running shelters and plan for the next storm. He said officials told him there were no guarantees of getting reimbursed, but if he got any funding back, then it would set a precedent for churches and counties to be able to work together more effectively in the future.
   
“That was in November and the next thing I heard from it was when an irate church member waved the article in my face,” he said. 
   
The article detailed the church’s request for $25,657.15 in reimbursements and singled out a few of the receipts, topping the list with a $66.64 payment to LuLu’s, a popular local restaurant. 
   
The LuLu’s expenditure, Shorrosh said, was an attempt to show gratitude to a team of people from a Northern state that had filled a horse trailer with provisions and driven it down — at great personal expense — to fill the needs at the church shelter. They would accept no payment, so the church bought them dinner to say “thank you,” he explained.
   
The shelter at Lagoon Baptist fed up to 250 people some Sundays and housed up to 21 people each night, Shorrosh said.
   
“We did everything in good faith and [the newspaper] viewed it with malicious intent,” he said, adding that he had his job called into question over the way the information was presented in print. “To see someone want to blow the cooperation of someone helping those in need — it’s horrifying.”
   
Giving the churches what they were calling “negative press” was never the county EMA’s intent, Ryals said. “We told the churches to turn in all their receipts — good, bad or ugly. We weren’t even planning to look at them but rather forward them straight to the state (EMA) and let them decide what’s eligible or ineligible.” 
   
After the commissioners’ meeting that addressed the need for reworking the form, a Register reporter demanded that the county EMA turn over all the receipts, she said.
   
Mike Marshall, editor of the Register, said he is surprised pastors are choosing to be sensitive about the coverage. “If you read the article, you’ll see that we made clear officials encouraged them to apply for the funding and that they recognized their terrific contributions to the effort,” he said. “If you look at the breadth of our coverage of the response [to Katrina] … you will see that we wrote a great deal about the contributions that churches made during that time.”
   
Jeff Copeland, pastor of First, Robertsdale, said the way the situation turned out was unfortunate.
   
“We now regret this issue has become politicized and through media coverage the main point of the whole issue is being missed,” stated the deacons and staff of First, Robertsdale, in a resolution drafted Feb. 5 and sent to the county commission. “We have a need for a plan to be in place to take care of hurting people after a disaster. We had hoped and still hope that we can work together to solve this problem.”
   
Though First, Robertsdale, has withdrawn its request for $14,117.31 in reimbursements, Ryals said the church has agreed to work with the county. A meeting is tentatively planned in the coming weeks to see how matters can be better handled in the future where sheltering is involved. “Our motive for the request was to solve a problem never to receive funds,” the resolution stated.
   
The shelters had been running for weeks before the county approached the church and said help might be available, Copeland added. “The main reason we did it was to be better prepared for next time because there will be a next time. There is no plan in our county for sheltering large numbers of people, so we were trying to establish a positive relationship between the county and the churches. If we did get anything from them, it would go into our Katrina fund to help people.”
   
And if they didn’t get anything, then it wasn’t important, he said. “We were glad to do it, and we would do it again.”