Groups join to push Flood insurance reform

In NFIP discussions, unity is as important as mitigation, privatization, mapping and other issues, groups say.

Legislators and stakeholders would like to get a bill extending and reforming the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) put together this year, with the understanding that action on it would in all likelihood occur in 2017, representatives of various industries said yesterday.

During a media advisory call March 5, Steve Ellis, vice president of Washington, D.C.-based Taxpayers for Common Sense, which defines itself as a nonpartisan budget watchdog, said no one in the process wants to see a repeat of the last time the NFIP expired, when it took nearly four years, four lapses and 17 short-term extensions before a long-term reauthorization was put in place. But Ellis said there’s also recognition that 2016 is an election year. “At some point this year, basically everything will stop in Congress.”